Surprising Reasons Why You Cannot Trust Food Labels Easily

How many times have you seen the food labels while shopping for food? At the super market , we look for the basics like the expiry date, price or cooking instruction. But a food label has a lot of hidden information, that should be taken seriously. This post will tell you why you cannot trust food labels at face value.

Most customers, do not pay attention to the food label beyond the basics. But if you know a little more about what goes into making that particular product , you can

• Make informed decisions about your purchase
• Purchase healthier food options
• Reject the foods that you know are harmful
• Know if the product offers value for money.
• Compare different food products and buy the best one.

Food labels provide information to the consumer about the product within the package. The consumer does not know how the product looks like when it is completely hidden from view.

Economists call this ‘information asymmetry’.

In order to correct this, information is provided to the consumer so that he can decide whether or not to purchase the product. In other words, food labels act as the guide for using the product appropriately.

Labelling laws for food and drink started in Europe during the middle ages. If the seller is face to face with the buyer, then he can explain about his own product. But with the onset of globalisation, sellers and buyers do not know each other. This led to the concept of food labelling.

What is a food label?

Food label is the medium through which a seller talks about his product in terms of

Quality, Quantity, Freshness, Identity, Usage

This is to gain trust from the consumer. The food label also prevents unscrupulous practices by any seller or unfair competition as a result of these practices. Thus it ideally has to protect both the buyer and the seller though the buyer is till at a higher risk than the seller. This is why you cannot trust food labels.

When the packaging revolution set in, the market used food labels as their competitive advantage. The packages became more colorful,vibrant and interesting and the food label was elevated to new heights.

The average consumer, even today, does not know how to read a food label correctly. A lot of myths (like color coding for toothpastes) exist in the industry compounding the problem further. This makes it still harder to trust food labels.

Food Label – Definition

A food label is any tag, brand, mark, pictorial or other descriptive matter that is written, printed, stencilled, marked, embossed or impressed on, or attached to, a container of food or food product.

FAO, United Nations

Front Label and Back label

There are two types of labels in every food packaging, the front label and the back label. Out of these, the purpose of the front label is to only look attractive and lure the customer into buying the product. Every front label claims something. It is the call to the customer to come near the product and get a closer look.

The competition in FMCG industry is pretty high with every single product having hundreds of both popular and lesser known brands.

In this mass, the front label’s duty is to only catch the customer’s eye.

The back label is what the customer should be aware of.

How many times have you purchased a product without checking the back label, just because the front label had words like ‘Multigrain’, ‘organic’ or ‘100% natural’.

Many times,right?

There are a lot of instances when we zoom through a super market picking products off-shelves, just by their packaging or probably the price (the only time many consumers actually look at the back label!)

Do we really stand there and read the product description of each and every product before making a purchasing decision?

Or even when we try reading the back label, can we really make sense of the description of the product.

Normally a food label contains the following information

• Name of the food or drink
• List of Ingredients
• Nutritional Value
• Date of manufacture
• Best Before/ Use By date
• Vegetarian or Non-vegetarian
• Quantity – Net weight (Sometimes serving size)
• Additives if any
• Cooking instructions
• Code number/Batch Number
• Address of the manufacturer

Decoding Food Labels

Here are the easy ways you can understand the food labels. All the food related guidelines for manufacturing, processing or packaging should adhere to the FSSAI guidelines.

FSSAI stands for

Food safety and standards authority of India.

The FSSAI seal of approval can be found in the back label.

If there is information about net weight and serving size on the back label, to know how many servings you will get, you just have to divide the net weight by the serving size.

Then see if the price justifies it. If it doesn’t, don’t buy the product. It offers no value for money.

The seller has to list every ingredient in the descending order of the product make-up. Which means, the first three names on the list are the major ingredients for making that product.

If saturated fats, additives, sugar etc come in that first three, stay away from the product.

Be skeptical of long list of ingredients.

‘Energy density’ refers to the calories per designated weight of the food (eg: per 100 g). There are foods with low energy density which can make you feel full but have lesser calories or the opposite (high energy density foods). Choose according to your needs.

A healthy person’s needs around 2000 calories per day.

Why you cannot trust food labels?

These are some of the common myths and facts which will justify why you cannot trust food labels.

• Zero Calorie is not actually zero. It can contain upto 4 calories per serving.
• Fat-free foods can contain 0.5 g of fat
• Low-fat product can have upto 3g of fat per serving
• 5g refers to one teaspoon. If a product contains 40g of fat,that is about 8 teaspoons of fat.
• Same is the case with sugar (5g is 1 teaspoon). Look out for this type of labels in products like soft drinks.
• 6g per 100g of fibre is a good amount of dietary fibre.
• Not all products that advertise the word ‘Light’ or ‘Lite’ are actually low in fat or calories. It can mean the food is light in sugar or salt or just color! Read the back label completely to know the details.

Use of different names

Sugar has at least twenty different names in the food industry. Some of which are glucose,fructose,cane sugar,brown sugar, maltose,raw sugar, evaporated cane juice etc.

All these are just sugar and would impact your body the same way sugar would.

Same is the case with syrups. Sugars in disguise, are present in syrups like maple syrup or malt syrup. By giving it different names, the seller can list it as different ingredients and distribute the weight per packet accordingly.

Look out for different types of sugar to know how much sugar content the pack actually contains.

High fructose corn syrup is the most common type of sugar found on food labels.

Use of healthy labels

Advertisements constantly use words like ‘gluten-free’ or ‘sugar-free’. This has lead customers to believe that such words imply that the product is highly nutritious. This is not true. These are some of the common labels. Look at this infographic to understand more about decoding food labels.

Gluten-free

Wheat and wheat related products have gluten. Bakery products rely on gluten to give the dough good elasticity and texture. Some people are allergic to gluten and this label started doing the rounds keeping them in mind.

Products were designed to not include gluten. Today gluten is shown as a cause for all gut-related problems. Not all of this information is true.

(If you have gut-related problems, here is a simple gut health food trend to strengthen and take care of your gut.)

Nowadays even products that are totally unrelated to gluten also advertise as gluten-free to attract customers.

Don’t fall for it thinking it is nutritious.

Sugar-free

Even the product that proudly claims that is sugar free, is using sugar under one of the other names as mentioned above. Some fruits that are used as an ingredient may also contain high sugar content. Though natural, this might also create too much sugar consumption in combination with other ingredients.

Breakfast cereals and flavored yogurt are products that have high sugar content and yet these products are not considered traditionally sweet.

Low Fat

Low fat simply refers that it is lower in fat compared to the other products. This could be even a very minor difference. Say the other brands of the same product contain 15 g of fat, and another brand contains 12g, this 12g would still be advertised as ‘low fat’.

People generally think they can consume this ‘low fat’ version on a higher level when in reality is is not low at all.

This is why you cannot trust food labels. You will be doing more harm to your body by consuming higher levels of these ‘low fat’ foods.

Fortified with calcium/Iron/Vitamins

There are a lot of food products these days which have food labels like ‘rich in calcium’ or ‘fortified with vitamin D’. Should you trust those? This may be true. The good ingredient they claim may be there in the product but what about the other unhealthy ingredients in the same product.

This kind of labelling effectively takes away the spotlight from unhealthy counterparts thus making the product appear genuinely good.

Whole Grains/Multi grains

Many products starting from biscuits to wheat flour advertise this term. Whole grains in their natural form are highly nutritious to the human body. But the quantity that these products actually contain have no real goodness impact.

There have been instances when these ‘multigrains’ constituted less than 5% of the product. So don’t trust food labels that say they are selling nutritious foods without confirming it first.

Types of fats

There are different types of fats listed commonly in food label

• Saturated fats
• Trans Fats
• Unsaturated fats
• Polyunsaturated fatty acids

It is important to have a basic knowledge about these fats.

The saturated fats increase cholesterol and are not good for your health.

Hydrogenated fats are trans fats, which are the worst type of fats.

They are added to increase the shelf life of a product. They spell trouble for your heart health and reduce good cholesterol while increasing bad cholesterol.

Unsaturated fats are better than saturated or trans fats. Polyunsaturated fats are healthy fats that have omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

Do you think fats are bad? Your body requires fat just like it requires vitamins and minerals.

Dietary fats are important for your body. Fats promote cell growth and keep you healthy. They help in absorbing nutrients well and are a good source of energy. You should not eliminate fats completely from your diet.

Look out for Sodium

Packaged foods like sauces or condiments contain a large amount of sodium. This is just excess salt that is harming your body if you use those types of products regularly.

This will negatively impact your heart rate and blood pressure too.

MSG or monosodium glutamate is a controversial food additive which is used to enhance flavor. It is present in many packaged foods including a wildly popular ‘Noodles’. It is known to cause allergic reactions, headache, nausea, chest pain among other serious health concerns.

Small quantities of MSG are allowed by FSSAI but it is best to stay away from products containing this substance.

Preservatives and added color

Preservatives and added colors are mandatory to be mentioned in the food label. These are not healthy foods. The higher these components are, the lower the quality of that product will be.

Use by Vs Best before

‘Use by date’ is a parameter for safety. You should absolutely not use the product (eat/cook) after that date. Where as ‘best before date’ is a parameter of quality rather than safety. The product is better is you use if before the best before date.

Now that you know not to trust food labels at face value, you can shop better. Do you know any other types of food label issues? Share it in the comments below!