How Food Labels Can Be Made to Sound Healthier Than They Really Are

People are always on the lookout for ways to eat healthier and/or lose fat and food makers are well aware of this fact. As a result, companies try to find ways to make less than healthy products appear more appealing to health conscious consumers. One of the main ways this is accomplished is by labeling products with terms, such as "light" or "low-fat." These terms can make products sound healthier, but they can also be very misleading.

Some terms like "low-carb" do not even have an official definition, so they have no real meaning and can be put on practically any food, regardless of the carb content. There is also a loophole on the regulated terms, such as "reduced fat" and "low-calorie," because they are all based on the weight of a serving of food. This means any ingredient that adds weight to a food, without adding calories, can turn a regular product into a "light" version of the food.

To illustrate how product labels can be manipulated, I will describe two cans of coconut milk (1 regular and 1 light) that I saw at the grocery store. The light version had a label on the front of the can stating it had 50% less fat than regular coconut milk, so I became curious and took a closer look at the label to find out why one can had so much less fat than the other.

When I compared the labels I saw that everything (fat, calories, etc.) was exactly 50% less in the light version. Then I compared the ingredients list and found that they were identical except the light version had a one added ingredient as the first ingredient. Can you guess what the extra ingredient was?

It was water.

The 2 coconut milks were exactly the same, except one was diluted 50%. Since water has no fat or calories it can be easily added to products to make them appear to contain less fat or fewer calories, so they can be labeled as "light" or "reduced." In this case, both products were sold for the same price, so buying the light version really just meant you were getting 50% less of the actual product.

From a cost standpoint, the best thing to do is buy the regular coconut milk and then dilute it yourself if you want to decrease the amount of fat. Most products are not diluted this much, but adding water or other low calorie ingredients to foods in order to make them appear healthier, is unfortunately quite common.

Another way companies attempt to make foods seem healthier is by replacing one unhealthy ingredient with a different ingredient that is equally unhealthy. Probably the most common tactic is to remove some fat and replace it with sugar. This allows foods to be labeled as "low-fat" or possibly "fat-free," but the food can still make you gain just as much weight as the higher fat product and sometimes even more.

Not every food label tries to manipulate the consumer, but many of them do, especially when it comes to junk foods or other highly processed products. When you are at the store, don't automatically assume the product with healthier sounding marketing is the best choice. Take a closer look at the labels and you may be surprised at what you find. Sometimes the regular food is actually healthier than the replacement food that is marketed to be a better choice.