Food labels: the top 5 tricks used to entice you to buy
Posted by kathryn in Shopping Basket and Food Labelling
Food shopping used to be simple. You’d buy meat from the butcher, vegetables from the greengrocer, milk from the milkman.
But that’s not the case anymore. Now food comes in boxes and wrappers. It’s covered in words and phrases which promise a lot. It may be “a delicious snack the whole family can enjoy” or “full of the goodness of wholesome grains”. Other products have a “fresh chopped taste” or even a “new formula with fruit pulp”. Sounds good doesn’t it?
Some aspects of food labelling are heavily regulated. However most of what’s on the label is marketing. And marketing is about selling a product. It’s there to entice you to buy. Marketing emphasises the good parts and downplays the negatives of a product. Which is exactly what happens on food labels.
I’ve talked before about food labelling. But I thought it time for a round-up of the top five ways food manufacturers can catch you out.
1. Disguising the nutritional negatives
While you may be trying to limit saturated fat, sugar and salt, food labels don’t always make this easy – even if you do read the ingredients list. Fat, sugar and salt all come in different forms, which means they can be hidden under different names in the ingredients’ list.
A packet of muesli may contain sugar, sucrose and malt. Three separate ingredients, but all containing sugars.
Tinned soups are often high in sodium, but manufacturers mask this by using several different sodium containing ingredients. Salt may be at the bottom of the ingredients, but look out for yeast extract and soy sauce. While these two add flavour, they are also high sodium ingredients.
What to do: You can find a full list of alternative names for fat, sodium and sugar in this post: food labels – how manufacturers disguise the baddies.
2. The illusion of quality
Ever wondered how a packaged product can be “fresh” or “home-made”? I don’t know either. However, along with “pure”, “gourmet” and “premium” these terms are frequently splattered over products.
Part of the problem is there’s no legal definition for any of these terms. Which means manufacturers are free to use them. And they do with gusto. Each term hints at a distinctive, special quality. Setting up the expectation of one product being better than its competitors.
Manufacturers also offer the illusion of quality through their packaging. High priced products are in special boxes, packets and cartons. But there’s often little difference between them and their cheaper neighbours.
I was thinking about this over the weekend, when looking at the nutritional breakdown of two brands of vegetable stock. One was powdered and in a fairly cheap looking container. While the other was in a carton, with gorgeous soft-focus pictures of soup on the outside. The carton stock looked better than the powdered: more natural, home-made – a better product. But nutritionally the reverse was true. The powdered stock was lower in salt and had fewer additives.
What to do: Ignore these illusions of quality and make up your own mind. Try the products out and compare the ingredients list. Does it contain what you think it should contain?
3. Vague nutritional claims
Here in Australia health claims are carefully regulated. You’re not allowed to say a product improves health, without significant research confirming the claim.
However manufacturers are free to use vague, misleading nutritional descriptions:
- “rich in the energy food for your body”
- “contains the goodness of milk”
- “high in dietary fibre to keep your body in great shape”
- “full of the goodness of wholesome grains”
- “a unique energy management system”
- “light in colour and taste”
I don’t know what half these really mean and I’m a nutritionist. They’re vague, useless terms. Emotive words which set up an expectation of health – but rarely mean what you expect.
What to do: Ignore these marketing claims and check out the nutrition information panel and ingredients list. This is the best way to work out whether a product is right for you.
4. Sneaky serving sizes
The majority of food packets include a nutrition information panel. This provides a breakdown of the nutrient content of the food per 100g and per serving.
Manufacturers frequently use odd serving sizes, to show their product in a favourable light. Particularly in comparison to their competitors.
Two of my favourite examples are:
- a couple of yoghurt manufacturers list their small, individual 200g tubs of yoghurt as two servings, when most people would eat the whole lot.
- One soft drink manufacturer describes a 375ml cans of their product as 1.88 servings – so they can make a claim about the kilojoule content of the product.
What to do: Be careful when looking at the nutritional information per serve. It’s easier to compare products through the information per 100g and then relate that back to how much you would eat.
5. When a picture doesn’t tell a thousand words
Pick up a packet and invariably the product looks fabulous. But when you open it up you can be severely disappointed. With the actual food looking nothing like the picture on the outside.
Food pictures are the product of food stylists, photographers and photoshop. What comes out the box can look very different from the photo.
One of the best examples of this is a local blueberry and apple breakfast cereal. The picture on the front looks like it’s bursting with real blueberries. However inside are pieces of dried apple soaked in blueberry juice and not one single actual blueberry.
What to do: Ignore the photo and flip the packet over. If an ingredient is in the picture it’s considered a characterising ingredient and the label must show the percentage of that ingredient in the product. Check your labels and that the food you’re buying contains what you think it should contain.
Label tricks don’t make shopping easy, so be sceptical and look at what you’re buying. Try to do most of your shopping in the periphery of the supermarket – where the fruit and vegetables, deli and fresh foods are. This will enable you to avoid most of the labelling tricks and traps.
What label tricks and traps have you noticed at your local supermarket?
08 July, 2008
Comments
Ooh, great post.
I don’t eat many processed foods, but occasionally when I do, I think it’s annoying when they call out “Zero Trans Fat” in big letters on the front of a package, and then when you read the ingredients, some kind of “fractionated oil” is listed. I also am on the lookout for “crystalline fructose” which is really just another name for “high fructose corn syrup.”
I have so many pet hates on this list!
one of my favourites is “cholesterol free” on vegetable oils
another is 93% fat free! what do people think the other 7% is?
Great post with lots of good info. Makes a trip to the supermarket feel like a battle against such dishonest types
I went through a phase of wanting to try new things and I have had to learn to curb my curiosity to fight the marketers who are always coming out with something new to entice!
Yet again I hark back to michael pollan’s advice that the more a product protests its healthiness, the less healthy it is likely to be compared to the fresh food that doesn’t have such marketers behind it
There really needs to be a plain English explanation of how to read food labelling for ‘everyday’ people. I never knew for example that the ingredient listed first has the most presence in the product. Or that sucrose, maltose, dextrose are all just sugar. Oo and that yoghurt serving thing REALLY annoys me – who eats half a yoghurt tub?
Great things to point out. I really appreciate your list of how manufacturers disguise the “baddies.” The serving size thing always gets me. I’ll pick something up and think “Oh, this isn’t bad at all!” only to realize that the serving size is about 1/4 of what I’m eating….
So many reasons to read what you are eating :)
One the latest “scams” in labels are those “healthy choice” labelling – like on baked chips, or on the 100 calories pre-packaged snacks.
You see a nice green check mark and think “hey this must be ok then” – oy.
I blogged about this already.
http://shortysadventure.blogspot.com/2008/07/do-good-things-really-come-in-smaller.html
(i hope its ok that i put that in!)
Man, those sneaky serving sizes really tick me off. I can remember standing in a supermarket in disbelief when i realised that it was cheaper to buy two smaller packets of an item than one big one. But the smaller ones had odd serving sizes that took a lot of head-maths to work out.
Good post!
I love label hunting. Sugar is everywhere! One of my favorite tricks is how cooking sprays claim to be fat free by making their serving size ridiculously small.
http://doesabodygood.blogspot.com/2007/11/spray-away.html
Excellent post!
Frankly, /all/ marketing irritates me. Saw a tooth-whitener product that had on it the words “begins to start working in [big font] 5 minutes!”
What I want to know is, when does it stop beginning to start and actually get into the business of starting to work? Even typing that sentence has me confused.
This may be unrelated. But I measured out 40g of muesli last night to check a serving size and far out, that is NOTHING. I chose to have toast instead. Instead of using the muesli for cereal now, i might use it as a light sprinkle on my yoghurts for dessert.
Tiny morsels: we don’t get a lot of high fructose corn syrup over here, but that’s good to know.
Grocer: it always used to make me laugh when they put “cholesterol free” stickers on avocados. Like these avocados were somehow special.
Johanna: it’s good advice from Mr Pollan. I know what you mean about the urge to try something new, sometimes that food marketing is so strong. I counter-act it by trying a new vegetable, a new recipe or buying some expensive cheese or oil. The flavour of the new, without the preservatives.
Sue: useful, plain English information is the holy grail of food labeling. But at present the food manufacturers are too strong and FSANZ doesn’t quite have the clout to do it. It’s an immensely complex problem, to cut off all the loopholes and exceptions.
Cookinpanda: that’s a common one. Particularly on packs of chips and biscuits. Tiny serving sizes to make the product look sooo much better.
Shorty: not only alright, but in fact thanks for including the link. We don’t have those “healthy choice” packets. But you’re exactly right. It’s still junk food – just a smaller amount of junk food. Lots of food manufacturers use ticks and made up logos, to enhance their health image.
Pete: supermarket maths drives me up the wall. I heard one supermarket over here was going to include a cost per 100g on the shelf label, although I’m yet to see it in action. My most hated food maths is over nuts and seeds. They’re available in several points of the supermarket (health, baking and snacks); each brand does different sized packets; qualities vary. Drives me crazy and my brain into meltdown.
Michelle: good point – I reckon it’s physically impossible to spray for 1/3 of a second. Ridiculous. Thanks for linking to that.
Merry: I can see I’m going to have to pay more attention to toothpaste packets. Another ridiculous statement.
Sue: no 40g is not a lot is it. But it’s still a really worthwhile food to include, because of its nutritional density and variety. Sprinkled on muesli for dessert or a mid afternoon snack makes sense.
Next week I’m going to reveal my most hated supermarket product. It’s the one guaranteed to make me see red. And for me epitomises everything wrong with food labeling.
Really great post Kathryn. What would the blogosphere do without you? The problem is that people just don’t have the time and marketers are devious people (I would know – i work in PR!!)
Excellent post and a really good read. I find lycopene to be a great pigment that can be found in tomatoes and other red fruits and is a great source for a healthly lifestyle. A company on the internet actually sell lycopene capsules and I have been told it reduces the risk of cancer and helps keep arteries healthy.
Hi there Debbie – yes Lycopene is shaping up to be a very useful antioxidant. But why buy a capsule when you can get it from food? Particularly as lycopene is one of the easiest to get into your diet. Add a tin of tomatoes to your cooking. Squeeze some tomato sauce over your dinner. Make some tomato soup. All are fantastic sources of lycopene. Plus you’re getting the benefit of other antioxidants and you’re filling up on the good stuff rather than eating the junk.
Don’t get me started on labelling! I complain less here in the UK than in the US, but there are some things that really drive me nuts here, too.
I do tend to stick to fresh ingredients and will mostly refuse to purchase anything with an ingredient list I can’t scan and take in super quick (which means I can’t eat most anything pre-packaged in the US since there’s just so much… crap – corn syrup in bread?!).
I hate how on pre-packaged fruit and veg in the UK (e.g 3 courgette in a plastic tray) it’s priced per item with no weight indicated on the packaging nor on the shelf label. To see how much it costs per kilo, you have to find a scale, weight it, and do the maths. Every single other type of produce is priced per weight. Not hard to work it out for yourself but considering all the EU issues with labelling weights in metric, you’d think there would be a law that says all produce must be priced per weight.
My favourite in the US is over-emphasising what’s considered positive on food products that in no way, ever, not in a billion years, could be good for you. “No carbs!” in huge lettering on a bag of candy floss comes to mind… Excellent. I’ll have that as a side with my Atkins-esque high-fat and high-protein slab of meat diet. Now I can have crap teeth and heart disease! :D
Kip – my parents are just back from the UK and they commented on how packaged everything was, including the fruit and veg.
About three years ago the town where they live banned plastic bags from all the shops. You’re able to get paper bags and boxes, but no plastic bags. They’ve become used to saving plastic, re-using, taking bags with them to the shops. So for them seeing fruit and vegetables pre-packaged was particularly horrifying.
No carbs – must be healthy – heavy sigh!
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