Front-of-Package: Why Are Our Foods Covered in Chaos?

Imagine groceries with no front-of-package labeling. No health claims. No “Heart Healthy” badges, no “0g Trans Fat” banners, no “All Natural” swishes. No claims about fiber or sugar. How would the poor helpless consumer know what to buy?

If you insist you’d be just fine without the boisterous labels, don’t be so sure. In fact, consumers say they do use the information on food labels to help them make buying decisions, according to the International Food Information Council Foundation – at a rate of 68%.

In a recent blog post, New York Times writer Mark Bittman cites Marion Nestle’s call to fix a broken the food system. Topping Nestle’s list is fixing front-of-package labeling. Nestle wants first and foremost to put a halt to marketing food to kids. “Period. Just make it go away,” she said. She also urges a complete eradication of health claims unless they are backed up by universally accepted science – which, she says, would get rid of them all.

Sorting Out the Labels – With More Labels

Front-of-package labeling – claims that adorn food packages that are not limited to the back-of-package Nutritional Facts – include percentage claims (25% daily fiber!) functional claims (heart healthy!) and broad claims about healthiness (better for you!) and they are everywhere in the grocery store aisle. And despite a call by many public interest groups for fewer labels, those badges seem only to be growing. Some, at least on the surface, exist to help us make sense of the already mounting claims – more labels to make sense of the labels.

In a new video report, The Lempert Report breaks down some of this “sort it out” labeling. Some of these include:

  • Guiding Stars – Indicators of good, better and best (1-3) based on a nutritional algorithm. The program has been implemented in local Hannaford stores and has a complementary education component for grade schools. The badge is intended to help shoppers find an easy way to find healthy food.
  • Nuv-val – This label provides foods with a score of 1-100 based on over 30 nutritional factors. It was created with the intention simplify information about healthy food, and it can be found in many different grocery stores, many outside of the Northeast.
  • Great for You – This new badge from Wal-Mart is a pass-fail system based on whether a food meets the requirements of being healthy. We talked in depth about this label here.
  • Facts Up Front – Another label meant to cut through nutritional complexity, this effort puts facts like calories, fat and sodium amounts in bold on the front of packages where they can readily be seen. It comes from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, has government support, and will be growing in visibility this year.

The more labels there are to add to the madness, according the Lempert Report, the more it begs the question of which of the labels will survive in this quest to direct the consumer to the best foods. According to Nestle, there are few if any worth saving. Even labeling that attempts to do good are really just tools for selling, not for buying, she said. And concerns are deepest when they are most misleading.

Surprisingly Misleading Food Claims 

According to the Huffington Post, The 9 Most Misleading Labels include claims of real fruit, low sugar, and confusing serving sizes, among others. As part of the worst offenders, the article highlights two troubling label issues that might surprise you: fiber and caffeine.

  • Fiber: On a quest to get more fiber in your diet? Many people are, due to its benefits for heart disease, diabetes, digestion and weight maintenance. But even fiber claims may be misleading when they appear on things like yogurt and granola bars, for instance. While the fiber content may indeed by high in these products, it may come from isolated fibers that do not have the comparable effect of fiber from intact foods. There is a reason that eating beans, berries and bran is a better option for fiber than some processed foods with fiber claims – it’s just another argument for relying on real, whole foods for nutrition.
  • Caffeine: This labeling conundrum is misleading due to non-labeling. The problem is a potentially dangerous omission. You may know about it because it has recently been in the news. Because there are no requirements to disclose the amount of caffeine in products such as chocolate or energy drinks, it may not be obvious when we sip or chew that we are ingesting high amounts of something that can be dangerous and addictive. (Even a single serving of a coffee flavored yogurt contains 30mg of caffeine, and some energy drinks can contain up to 280mg!). High amounts of caffeine can lead to illness, anxiety, stomach problems and dependence.

Such labeling chaos has led to some organizations to push for reform. A 2010 report published by the Center for Science for Public Interest calls for making labels to be easier to read and for putting a stop to terms like “natural”, “0 trans fats”, and functional heart claims such as “heart healthy”. Other public interest groups have been vocal when it comes to more labeling which would inform consumers about foods that are genetically modified. Advocates for better labeling on beef, including claims it is “grass fed” are also at work on misleading claims. According to Onlygrassfed.com, this tricky claim means only that an animal has some access to grass, not that it is grass fed.

Until the chaos stops, every claim is backed by solid science, and every potential danger made apparent, it is, as always, caveat emptor at the grocery store. If you are weary of food label chaos, here are three uncomplicated ways to eliminate health claim fatigue.

Help for the Label-Weary 

Stick to the facts. Understanding the Nutrition Facts key on the back of food packaging (not the front) is essential. You can learn more from the Mayo Clinic’s interactive guide to the Nutrition Facts label. It shows which nutrients to limit and which to get more of. You can also take a look at our Nutritional Facts primer from a past post.

An ingredients list that’s easy to digest.

Avoid the claims. Foods that don’t have packaging, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, make their own case for health. Stick to the perimeter of the store to shop foods that are closest to their natural form and provide good health without the confusing claims.

Buy foods with fewer ingredients. This ingredient list for frozen wild blueberries shows exactly what you are getting: the whole fruit, and just the fruit, with its fiber, nutrients, and antioxidant content intact, the way nature intended.

Learn more About Labels

The FDA provides labeling information and the latest updates about label legislation at FDA.gov. You can also view an entertaining video created to help consumers get the facts about labels.

Does Your Shampoo Make You Taller? 15 Silver Bullets To Steer Clear Of

Any insomniac who has turned on late night TV to be confronted with a barrage of infomercials can tell you there’s a quick fix for everything. Saggy abs? Try this. Cluttered closet? We’ve got the fix. Suffering the indignity of shelling a hard boiled egg? Here’s the solution.

Some claims are easy to see through—even if they seem convincing, experience tells us they aren’t the silver bullet. That’s because there is no silver bullet. We know our shampoo won’t make us taller and better looking, even if everything about it seems to imply that it will.

But sometimes we forget—we get lazy, we get vulnerable, we let our guard down—especially when we feel especially hopeful about a certain area of our life, like our weight and our health. Two sides of ourselves battle it out: we want to eat and enjoy food, but we also want to watch our weight. We want to be healthy in the long term, but in the short term we don’t want to spend hours on a treadmill. We love the nirvana of sugar-salt-fat combinations but know better than to indulge in them. That gap between what we know and what we long for is where the silver bullet claims wedge themselves.

Keep a mental note of dubious verbiage and keep it on your radar. Here are 15 examples to start you out:

  • scientific breakthrough
  • medical miracle
  • best
  • fast
  • secret
  • fortified
  • enriched
  • natural
  • for a limited time only
  • used by (famous celeb)
  • no trans fat
  • zero sugar (but high in fat)
  • zero fat (but high in sugar)
  • low calorie (for serving size & poor quality)
  • 97% fat free (3% fat by weight)

Today, there is compelling health research that helps us understand how food affects how our bodies work. Understanding that research can help us navigate a world tricked out with unhealthy land mines; it is essential to being an informed consumer. We want information, not claims.

We learned years ago from Eric Schlosser that for some foods to be labeled as “natural” they actually had to endure additional processing. While false claims on nutritional labels are under scrutiny, we still seem to be dodging silver bullets and wading through too-good-to-be-trues. Keeping our guard up means not falling victim to empty marketing promises and over-hyped claims that guarantee the latest and greatest—even when we know better.

Just the Facts (More or Less) – A Nutrition Label Analysis

Do the Super Chocolate Sugar-Os you had for breakfast claim to combat heart disease? Did that 20-ounce bottle of soda from the vending machine you polished off during lunch say it actually contains 2.5 servings?

If so, you are a casualty of Nutrition Labeling.

Nutritional Labels began showing up on food packaging in 1992 as a result of an effort from the Food and Drug Administration and the USDA to help consumers better understand the food they are eating. Since then, the ubiquitous black and white rectangle has endured criticism and ridicule as a tool to improve eating habits. For starters, they often present unrealistic serving sizes, and their polysyllabic ingredient lists can require a Ph.D. in Nutrition (or Philology) to translate.

These little boxes also epitomize the challenge of too much and too little. By leaving out the stuff we could use – such as daily values for trans-fats, for example, which can lead to the development of heart disease – they sometimes come up short by offering information without a way for the consumer to actually use it.

However, far from being the culprit, labeling is being touted as the key to a healthy diet – and it can be, if those labels provide accurate and helpful information. New regulations may make labels that are apprehendable by humans the norm. As part of efforts towards fighting the nationwide battle against obesity, the FDA is currently supporting a requirement by food manufacturers to post nutritional information on the front of packages where it can be seen, not in a little box on the back, and requiring more “practical” serving sizes and accurate health claims. As a result, your box of Super Chocolate Sugar-Os can only claim it is “heart healthy” if it comes with a treadmill and a pair of sneakers – and instructions to throw out the box.

Such regulations might make labeling part of the solution. Of course, conventional wisdom tells us that the best foods don’t have labels. They are found in the produce section, where the only packaging is bright, unblemished skin and lush leaves. But thanks to quick freezing technology, we know that frozen fruits and vegetables maintain all (or more) of the nutritional benefits of fresh food, as well as offering convenience, price and low waste…and frozen fruits and vegetables have labels, right?. As smart consumers, it seems we’ll never get away from reading labels despite our on-again, off-again relationship with them. It pays to be label-savvy.

As part of improving our label I.Q., we’re taking a look at a typical Nutritional Label created from a nutritional analysis done on wild blueberries to see what this “just the nutritional facts” box has to offer – and what it doesn’t offer up.

5 Nutrition Label Numbers You Should Know About

1) Serving Size & Calories

While many of us have grown wise to the scheme, we know that the “new math” demonstrated by the serving size/calories equation can trip up even a keen consumer. It’s why a bag of chips may seem low in calories, until you realize a “serving” is four chips. And, if you’ve ever eaten New York Super Fudge Chunk directly from the carton, you have a little field knowledge about the voluntary delusion these numbers cater to.

In the case of the wild blueberry label, there are 40 calories in 100 grams. One hundred grams is equal to a little less than ½  cup, and USDA’s Dietary Guidelines recommend 1 to 2½ cups (depending on age and gender) of fruits and vegetables a day. So, ½ cup of wild blueberries delivers one fruit serving, getting you well on your way to your quota, a mere 45 calories later. Not bad – blueberries are truly a naturally low-calorie food. If you ate wilds exclusively in an effort to get your daily requirements, you’d only be racking up between 90-225 calories a day.

While that’s low, we also have to consider nutrition-to-calorie ratio: healthy foods mean more nutrients per calorie, and that’s the key to achieving better health and lower weight. It’s why fruits and vegetables get high marks for health: their calorie to nutrition ratio is excellent, so in most cases (unless you are battling a broccoli addiction) the more you eat the better.

Also, wild blueberries have more skin per serving – cultivated blueberries create their serving-size bulk with a much higher pulp-to-skin ratio. That means higher antioxidant capacity and more nutritional punch per serving for wilds, another thing the label doesn’t tell you.

2) Fiber

When choosing foods, consumers are often looking for good sources of dietary fiber. Fiber is good for you because it can help prevent diseases such as heart disease and cancer. It’s also good for your digestive system, and it can help maintain a healthy weight.

The recommended amount of fiber is 25 grams per day. While processed foods are void of fiber, some high fiber foods can also be loaded with sugar and salt. So if we’re using high fiber numbers as a rule of thumb, we have already found ourselves in a sticky (if not a sticky bun) situation.

Whole grains are great sources of fiber, as are fruits, and this label indicates that each serving provides 4 grams of fiber. Blueberries are high on the fruit fiber scale, along with apples, pears and mangoes. One cup of blueberries per day would provide 36% of your daily requirement of fiber without stealth additives straggling along. Bravo!

3) Sugar

Sugar has become a nutritional expletive, but sugars are a part of a healthy diet, and there is no nutritional organization that calls for a limit on natural sugars. Most fruits and vegetables contain sugar, and sugar amounts are plainly labeled on food packages. What isn’t on the label, however, is whether they are natural or added, making the sugar amounts less helpful than they should be.

It’s up to us to avoid foods that are high in sugar but void of other nutrients, and to differentiate between sugars like sucrose and corn syrup that are added to foods and those that occur naturally. We can do that by referring to the ingredients list.

Our blueberry label indicates 7 grams of sugar. Because this label refers to the natural food and the data refers to just one ingredient (there is nothing added), these are natural sugars, not added ones. Frozen wilds have no additives (who needs them) and their nutritional makeup is exactly the same as a blueberry taken straight from the barren.

4) Carbohydrates & the Glycemic Index

The nutritional label indicates that this food has 13 grams of carbohydrates. What’s most interesting about this food, however, is a number behind the carbs that isn’t listed here. Perhaps it should be—it’s the Glycemic Index.

The Glycemic Index ranks carbohydrate foods according to their effect on the body’s blood glucose levels. Individual foods are compared to white bread or glucose and ranked on a 100-point scale, with white bread at 100. A GI of 70 or more is high; 56 to 69 is medium; 55 or less is low. At the high end of the scale are crackers and corn flakes; at the low end are non-starchy vegetables, fruits, beans, sugars and most dairy products. Consuming low GI foods causes a smaller rise in blood glucose levels than consuming high GI foods — an important consideration for people with diabetes. (Nutritionists are also interested in the effect GI foods may have on weight loss and appetite control. Research is currently under way to evaluate these claims.)
In a recent test, wild blueberries scored 53 on the Glycemic Index (GI) scale making them a low GI food. This translates into health benefits – low GI foods don’t escalate blood sugar levels, don’t cause mid-day “crashes” and don’t contribute to that diet-decimating cycle of eating and getting hungry, then eating, and then getting hungry. In addition to lowering diabetes risks, low GI goods can decrease risks of cancer, high cholesterol and heart disease. So, while GI numbers aren’t showing up on the label, they probably should be.
5) Vitamins & Antioxidants

Only two vitamins (A and C) and two minerals (calcium and iron) are required on the food label. Food companies can voluntarily list other vitamins and minerals in the food. And, when vitamins or minerals are added to the food, or when a vitamin or mineral claim is made, those nutrients must be listed on the nutrition label.

While we don’t see anything listed for “antioxidants” on this label, vitamins A, C and E provide antioxidants, and they have made an appearance here. In fact, Women’s Fitness reports that one of the top 10 great things about blueberries is their high capacity to deliver on vitamins. They have the highest antioxidant capacity of all fruits, they include anthocyanin, vitamin C, B complex, vitamin E, and vitamin A, and they neutralize free radicals which can affect disease and aging in the body. There is no antioxidant number on this label, but if we’re nutrition savvy, the data about vitamins that deliver the antioxidant power can help tip us off.

Furthermore, wild blueberries also outperformed selected fruits in an advanced procedure known as the cellular antioxidant activity (CAA) assay, a new means of measuring bioactivity inside cells. Wild Blueberries performed better in cells than cranberries, apples and both red and green grapes. Find that interesting? It provides guidance not just about whether to choose a fruit over a fruit cake, but what fruit you should choose for the biggest nutritional punch. While the presence of vitamins is evident on the label, it’s what’s missing about what those vitamins deliver that is not.

Bottom Line

What can we learn by looking at the label? In this case, we know that wild blueberries are a naturally nutrient-rich choice. At just 45 calories per serving, they are packed with antioxidants and deliver substantial nutrients for every calorie consumed. But their nutritional power isn’t always evident on the label: antioxidant capacity, pulp-to-skin ratios, and the glycemic index aren’t numbers that can be easily extracted here. And if this had been a more nutritionally “complicated” food, this label could have masked some important nutritional deficits as well.

Until labels and packaging tell us more of what we need to know and less of what we don’t, the bottom lime is: don’t be a casualty of the nutritional label game – know the facts about what’s behind the numbers before you buy.