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Shop the smart way with author Pat Thomas’ report on the real story behind what’s in the products you buy.
Food
labels are the inevitable result of our reliance on pre-packaged,
processed convenience foods. Most of us have become so accustomed to
buying food with labels we can hardly imagine purchasing a food that
doesn’t come with an ingredients list, and cooking, heating and storage
instructions.
Totally natural foods need no cooking
instructions, no statements about nutritional content (or lack of it),
no cautions about contaminating traces of nuts or other allergens, no
disclaimers about how this information affects your statutory rights
and no hype about how much better this product is for you than a dozen
other similar products on the supermarket shelves.
Given how
ubiquitous processed foods are in our diets, some label information is
useful. Statements about fat, protein, carbohydrate, sodium and calorie
content can be helpful.
But the truth is, most labels are
designed for a less worthy purpose. Food companies use packaging and
labels as mini-advertisements for their products. Sometimes the two
functions of a label – to provide accurate information and to entice
someone to buy the product – are in conflict. When this happens, the
manufacturer will do everything possible to distract you from the truth
about their product.
For this reason, food labels can be
misleading, especially if you don’t learn how to read between the lines
and examine the fine print. Knowing what the words on the label really
mean is a big step in learning to make better choices in the
supermarket.
Getting beyond the hype
While the meanings
of many of the terms found on food packages are regulated by law, it’s
still easy to be deceived by them. The food may not be as good for you
as its large and colourful claims would have you believe and, while
manufacturers cannot illegally lie on a food label, they are allowed,
within reason, to stretch the truth. Be wary of these tricky terms:
‘Pure’
Everyone
wants to eat food that’s pure. You would not want to put contaminated
food into your body. But the word ‘pure’ has no ‘regulated’,
agreed-upon meaning in food-labelling. It tells you nothing about
what’s in the product that perhaps should not be there. Even pure foods
can contain unwanted processing aids and contaminants. The packaging of
most ready-made foods can leach chemicals such as adhesives, polyvinyls
and hormone-disrupting bisphenol A and phthalates into food. This is
especially true of canned goods and foods that go from freezer to oven.
‘Made from…’
Simply refers to a starting material.
For example, the claim ‘made from 100 per cent vegetable oil’ may be
technically correct, but it is misleading. A lot can happen to a simple
vegetable oil before it gets into our food, or ends up as a margarine
or spread. Along the way, it may have been diluted or hydrogenated,
changing it from a healthy fat to an artery-clogging trans fat. Another
common label lie is ‘made from natural…’ This simply means that the
manufacturer started with a natural source. But, by the time the food
was processed, it may be anything but ‘natural’. The chicken nuggets
you feed your child may be made from chicken, but ask yourself: which
part of the chicken? In many cheap products, every part of the chicken,
including organs, feet, beaks and other non-nutritious parts, are
included to support the ‘made from…’ claim.
‘Made with real fruit’
This
boast is particularly prevalent in snacks for children. Sadly, there is
no law requiring labels to say how much real fruit is in the product.
Often ‘real fruit’ snacks contain more sugar, preservatives and colours
than fruit.
‘Made with whole grains’
This claim is
a similar labelling ‘white lie’ that leads the consumer to believe they
are buying and eating healthy wholegrain cereal or bread. But the
package label is not legally required to say how much ‘whole grain’ is
in the product. Its main ingredient could be refined flour with just a
small amount of whole wheat (and brown colouring) added. This means the
food won’t contain all the fibre and other nutrients associated with
wholegrains.
‘Fat free’
Fat content provides the
pleasing ‘mouth feel’ in natural foods and removing it alters the
consistency of food as well as the way it tastes. As a result, fat-free
foods are often full of emulsifiers, modified starches, sugar (or
artificial sweeteners), salt and artificial flavourings. Sugary foods
may not contain fat, but when you eat more sugar than your body can
effectively process, it will eventually result in your body storing
this extra sugar as fat.
Some intake of fat is necessary for
health, and we need a combination of both saturated and unsaturated
fats in our diet each day. A good example of why this is so can be seen
in salads. Some nutrients in fresh vegetables are fat soluble ones such
as ‘carotenes’. These are antioxidant and disease-fighting substances.
Adding a drizzle of oily dressing to your salad aids your absorption of
these nutrients, whereas studies show that a fat-free dressing or no
dressing at all effectively stops your body absorbing any of these
beneficial nutrients from fresh vegetables.
‘Enriched’
‘Enriched’
is a tip-off that this food may have been rendered so nutritionally
poor through processing that the manufacturers had to put some of the
good stuff back in to call it ‘food’. Enriched flour, enriched white
bread and enriched cereals are all good examples of foods that have
been processed to such a degree.
‘Light’
Light or
lite usually refers to a product that has low levels of some perceived
'bad' content such as fat or sugar. As a result, lite products are
usually diet products. Food manufacturers are very aware that the word
'diet' has negative connotations, usually to do with restriction and
denying ourselves the things we like. So on many products the word
light or lite replaces diet. Often it is a signal word that the food is
highly processed, contains a lot of additives such as artificial fats
to give it some sort of mouth feel or artificial sweeteners, or even
MSG to give it flavour. Look on the labels of light foods and you will
see all kinds of emulsifiers and colours as well because these are
imitations of food.
‘Organic’
Organic is first
and foremost an agricultural method that guarantees a certain level of
quality – an absence of synthetic fertilisers, respect for the land and
the people who work it, a concern for the health of the people who
consume what is grown on that land. If a food is certified organic (for
instance by Australian Certified Organic and others) then you can trust
that it meets a certain standard of quality. The problem is that
‘organic’ is starting to become an abused term in the supermarket. You
can buy all kinds of organic junk food for instance, crisps, biscuits,
sweets, ready made meals, sodas, etc. While convenient, these really do
go against the spirit of organic which is about healthy fresh, locally
produced food. In the UK some surveys have found that organic biscuits
(cookies) can contain more fat and more sugar in them than conventional
varieties. If you are committed to buying good food for your family you
need to watch out for these organic cons.
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