Home Cartoon characters What do misleading food labels like “less processed” and “multigrain” actually mean?

What do misleading food labels like “less processed” and “multigrain” actually mean?

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Label: “Multigrain” (Pepperidge Farmhouse Multigrain Bread)

Translation: “More than one grain that may or may not be a whole grain.”

The “Multigrain” is in big letters on the front, but in small letters on the back, we have the first ingredient: enriched wheat flour. It is refined white garden variety flour, not whole grain. Then there is water, sugar, yeast, sunflower seeds and wheat grains. When we get to the “2% or less” part of the label, we find wheat gluten, cornmeal, pearl barley, rye, triticale, and malted barley flour. It’s white bread with a whole grain dressing.

Ultimately, there’s no way to tell what percentage of the grains are whole unless you go all out and get the “100% Whole Wheat” or “100% Whole Grain” bread.

Label: “Less processed” (Domino Golden Sugar)

Translation“We don’t think you’re very smart.”

To make sugar white, processors must eliminate vegetable fibers and molasses, which give the sugar a brown color. Remove less of these and you have “golden sugar”. It is in fact less processed, because it does not undergo the final refining stage which makes white sugar pure. No shade of sugar is better or worse for you than another, but Domino thinks that if you know it’s “less processed” you’ll think it’s better.

Label: “Packaged in France” (The Wild Mushroom Co. Gourmet Mix Dried Mushrooms)

Translation: These could come from absolutely anywhere except France.

The dried mushrooms in the bag come from Poland, Serbia, Romania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Bosnia and/or Hungary. But once you ship them to France, they’re French, right?

Label: Bright colors and cartoon characters (Danimals smoothies for kids)

Translation: Regular smoothies, but with more sugar.

A “strawberry flavor” Danimals yogurt smoothie (it doesn’t contain strawberries) has 7 grams of added sugar in a 50-calorie serving. This means that more than half of its calories come from added sugar – if you add the 2 grams of natural sugar, 72% of the calories come from sugar. Seventy-two percent.

Next door was an adult-style “drinkable yogurt” from Siggi with real strawberries. In its 190 calories, it contains 9 grams of added sugar, or 18 grams in total. It’s still high, but 38% of calories from total sugar is about half of what’s in the kids’ version.

Label: Garden vegetable chips (Sensible Portions brand)

Translation: Greenish potato chips.

When I was a kid, my mom had a blind friend, Mrs. Fiorino, who made fun of people buying chocolate shakes at McDonald’s. “Stupid, conspicuous people,” she said. “They think if it’s brown, it’s chocolate.”

Mrs. Fiorino would have had fun with vegetable crisps. If it’s green, it’s a vegetable! But compare the Nutritional intakes to regular Pringles, and they are virtually identical.

Label: “Designed with only to clean Ingredients” [emphasis theirs] (on Sweet Loren’s Chocolate Chunk Cookie Dough)

Translation: We would like you to forget that this is cookie dough. [emphasis mine]

Sweet Loren really stacks with “gluten-free”, “dairy-free”, “plant-based”, and “non-GMO”. It’s so easy to focus on what it’s not! But it’s sugar-free, fat-free, and gluten-free flour; it’s cookie dough.

Label: “Uncured” (Applegate beef hot dogs)

If you come here often, you already know that the “uncured” bacon and hot dogs are absolutely, positively cured. Look at the fine print (that’s the running theme here), and you’ll see that the last ingredient is “celery powder”. The reason it’s in your hot dogs is because celery is naturally high in nitrates. This nitrate is converted into nitrite and – voila! – you get the same effect as bacon and regular, salty hot dogs get plain old sodium nitrite.

But before you get really mad, know that if you treat your hot dogs with celery powder, you’re Required by law to label it “uncured”. On second thought – go ahead, go crazy! Just be sure to direct your anger at the US Department of Agriculture.

Label: “Fruit snacks, made with real fruit!” (Welch brand)

Of the 90 calories in a serving, 52 of them come from sugar — almost all from added sugars. Of course, you also get 25% of your daily vitamins A, C, and E, but that comes from fortification, not anything resembling fruit. Oh, and just above the Nutrition Facts panel, in lower case, you find “Not intended to replace fresh fruit in the diet”.

Label: “Cheerios [fill in the blank — Oat Crunch, Apple Cinnamon, Pumpkin Spice, Honey Nut, Frosted, Very Berry . . . ]”

Translation: Cheerios, but sweeter.

Original Cheerios is an excellent cereal option. It’s made with real whole oats and there are only 2 grams of sugar per serving. But every brand extension is just an excuse to add sugar. Chocolate Cheerios at 11 grams, honey nuts at 12, Oatmeal Crunch a 15, and so on. Don’t let the health halo of the real thing rub off.

Label: Three ingredients: wheat flour, safflower oil and sea salt (Back to Nature crackers)

Translation: Flip the box!

the third ingredient (after flour and oil) is sugar. Just like the fourth (in the form of brown rice syrup). It is not a high sugar food; it’s only 1 gram per serving, just like the Ritz Biscuit he competes with. But the ingredient lists on the front of the box rarely match those on the back.

Label: “Topping made with REAL CHOCOLATE!” [emphasis theirs] (Krave cereal)

Translation: Breathe deeply. This is a BREAKFAST CEREAL! [emphasis mine]

Really, is REAL CHOCOLATE what you want for breakfast? If you are a child, the answer is: absolutely! That’s why there’s such a thing as chocolate breakfast cereal, and why it’s at your kids’ eye level.

Label: “Made in batches from scratch” (cheescake Sara Lee)

Translation: Nothing. It means nothing.

But watch how Sara Lee tries to play you with “batches” and “from scratch,” words we associate with home and health.

If you want to make sense of labels without a handy translation tool, I have a rule of thumb: ignore anything on the front of the package, especially adjectives. If you find that hard to do, just think of a group of business guys sitting in a conference room, deciding that “Made in batches from scratch” should be printed on the box of cheesecake, and ask- you if you should listen to these people.

Remember that the main purpose of labels is to entice you to buy the food. Manufacturers have a bunch of ways to make you feel good about the food you want to eat anyway. For the most part, the stronger they sell it – whole grains! good source of vitamin C! probiotic! – the more skeptical you should be.

All the important stuff, the stuff that has to be there, the stuff that manufacturers have very little wiggle room for, is on the back, in small print: the nutrition facts panel and the ingredient list.

My husband, Kevin, who’s been on all of my tag-finding expeditions with me, sums it up this way: Don’t be silly.