Don't Get Caught in a Food Label Trap
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Research has proven that adding health claims to front labels affects people鈥檚 food choices. And, some food label claims are extremely misleading.
Here are few buzz words that might confuse us:
Light: 鈥淟ight鈥 products are processed to reduce either calories or fat, and some products are simply watered down. Check carefully as light on fat usually means heavy on sugar.
Multigrain: This sounds very healthy, but it basically just means that there is more than one type of grain in the product, which is most likely refined grains, unless the product is marked as 鈥渨hole grain鈥.
Made With Whole Grain: There is probably very little whole grain in the product. Check the ingredients list and see where the whole grain is placed. If it is not in the first three ingredients, then the amount is negligible.
Natural: This doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean the product resembles anything natural, but that at some point the manufacturer had a natural product like apples or rice to work with.
Organic: This label says very little about whether the product is healthy or not, eg, organic sugar is still sugar.
No Added Sugar: Some products are naturally high in sugar. The fact that they don鈥檛 have added sugar doesn鈥檛 mean they鈥檙e healthy. They may well be loaded with natural sugars or have unhealthy sugar substitutes added.
Low Calorie: Low calorie products have to contain 1/3 fewer calories than the same brand鈥檚 original product. However, one brand鈥檚 low-calorie version may contain similar calories as the original of another product.
Low Fat: This label almost always means that the fat has been reduced at the cost of adding more sugar.
Low Carb: Recently, low-carb diets have been linked with improved health. However, processed foods that are labelled 鈥渓ow-carb鈥 tend to be just processed junk foods.
Fortified or Enriched: Fortified means vitamins or minerals have been added to a food that weren鈥檛 originally in the food. For example, adding vitamin D to milk. Enriched means nutrients that were lost during food processing have been added back, e.g. adding back certain vitamins lost in processing wheat to make white flour.
Gluten Free: Gluten-free does not automatically mean healthy. It simply means that the product doesn鈥檛 contain wheat, spelt, rye or barley. Many foods are gluten-free, but are highly processed and loaded with unhealthy fats and sugar.
Fruit Flavored: Many processed foods refer to a natural flavor like strawberry yogurt, however, it may not contain any actual strawberries, only chemicals designed to taste like them. If the product does contain some natural flavoring from real fruit, and it鈥檚 not one of the first three ingredients listed, then it鈥檚 negligible.
Zero Trans Fat: 鈥淶ero trans-fat鈥 actually means 鈥渓ess than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving.鈥 So if serving sizes are misleadingly small, the product can actually contain a lot of trans-fat.