Food Label

Reading food labels isn't as easy as you think. Here's how to decipher nutrition labels so you can separate fact from marketing.



It's a fact of the grocery store that the most healthy food often has the least marketing muscle behind it. The best source of fiber and vitamins are fresh vegetables and fruit, and yet it's the processed, packaged junk food fortified with vitamin and fiber powder that screams for attention. The Center for Science in the Public Interest recently published a comprehensive report on the subject, a persuasive indictment delicately called "Food Labeling Chaos." http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/food_labeling_chaos_report.pdf

"Consumers need honest labeling so they can spend their food dollars wisely and avoid diet-related disease," said CSPI senior staff attorney Ilene Ringel Heller, co-author of the report. "Companies should market their foods without resorting to the deceit and dishonesty that's so common today. And, if they don't, the FDA should make them."

Like listening skeptically to a politician speak, however, you can often decipher the truth amid the lies and misdirection by carefully reading food labels. Here we take a look at nine of the most common ways food labels lie, so you can prepare before your next trip to the grocery store.

Made With Whole Grains

You're standing in the grocery aisle, faced with a choice. On the one hand, there are the Thomas' English Muffins of your youth: white and filled with nooks and crannies practically screaming to be filled with pools of melted butter. On the other: Thomas' Hearty Grains English Muffins, which is "made with the goodness of whole grains." You reach, somewhat grudgingly, for the healthy option, since experts tell you that 50% of your grains should be whole grains.

What you don't realize is that unbleached wheat flour is the main ingredient; whole wheat flour is the third on the list, "indicating that the product contains relatively little," according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Once again, one truth – the presence of whole grains, masks another, that whole grains make up an insignificant portion of the food. Some products that trumpet their whole grain credentials (like Keebler's Zesta saltine crackers) use caramel to mimic the brown color that results from the use of whole grains; in fact, according to CSPI, the crackers have almost as much salt as whole grains. Other purportedly healthy crackers have more sugar than whole wheat. So much for healthy whole grains (or truth in advertising).

0 Trans Fat
Like some kind of Frankenstein's monster, we stagger down the grocery aisles, arms outstretched, growling, "Trans Fat Bad!" And yes, they are bad. After numerous studies showed that these fats boost "bad" LDL-cholesterol levels and lower "good" HDL-cholesterol counts (they've been called "the most potent type of fatty acid in terms of increasing the risk of coronary heart disease") the U.S. required companies to disclose trans fat content in their foods.



But it's marketers who made our modern Frankenstein mutter: While some companies reformulated their products to reduce the use of risky fats, many just replaced trans fats with saturated fats. These reformulated foods are basically just as bad, but they scream one truth: "0 trans fats!" to obscure another: "still bad for your heart!"

Tastes Like Medicine!



Food isn't medicine ... or is it? Certain micronutrients, after all, can prevent diabetes, cure cancer, make you smarter, improve your sex life, polish your furniture, and, if you eat enough, make your fall in love again for the first time*...


In truth, the FDA allows food manufacturers to make certain pre-approved "qualified health claims" about the health benefits of nutrients in food, but only if those foods meet a range of healthy criteria, like low fat, cholesterol and sodium content. But, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, marketers have stretched this inch into a long mile. For instance, food makers can't say that their product "helps reduce the risk of heart disease" without FDA approval, so they say that it "helps maintain a healthy heart." That's why several public health groups, including the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, have voiced concern about this trend.


In the most famous recent example, the FDA stopped General Mills from labeling Cheerios with cholesterol reducing claims it wouldn't allow on some prescription drugs. Another, which the California attorney general helped stamp out, was the Kellogg's claim that its children cereals "support your child's immunity" because, even though some are 40% sugar, they are fortified with vitamins. "While a severe deficiency in those vitamins could interfere with the proper functioning of the body’s immune system (and any other system), there is no evidence that Cocoa Krispies actually improves a children’s immune status or wards off disease," CSPI argues. But Kellogg's is far from alone. Even as Kellogg's stopped that line of marketing, Ocean Spray cranberry juice and Juicy Juice berry beverage, Nestlé's Carnation Instant Breakfast and Kraft's Crystal Light all make similar claims.


Other foods make claims about boosting your kid's intelligence (Juicy Juice), or protecting healthy joints (orange juice), or improving heart health (Quaker cinnamon and spice instant oatmeal, which is almost one-third sugar).


Bottom line: Food is food, not medicine.