Study suggests ‘healthy’ food labels are misleading

Food labels could be misleading shoppers into thinking that they are eating well, research has found.

Words such as ‘organic, ‘antioxidant’, and ‘gluten-free’ trick health conscious shoppers into buying them.

There are also fears that some of the food claims may be contributing to the obesity epidemic.

A US study has found food marketers were exploiting people’s desires to be healthy by claiming that products were nutritious when they were not.

Temple Northup from the University of Houston said the nutritional fact panels printed on food packaging did little to counteract buzzword marketing.

The researchers randomly showed 318 volunteers images of food products with health marketing words either excluded or included.

Products with trigger words analysed in the study included lasagna (wholegrain), peanut butter (all natural), apple sauce (organic), chocolate Cheerios (heart healthy), and Cherry 7-Up (antioxidant).

When one of the trigger words was present, the volunteers would rate the items as healthier. The volunteers also compared nutrition fact panels on pairs of products.

“Findings from this research study indicate people are not very good at reading nutritional labels, even in situations where they are choosing between salmon and spam,” said Dr Northup. “Approximately 20% picked spam as the healthier option.”

Safefood’s chief specialist in nutrition, Marian Faughnan, said research on the island of Ireland in May found that foods marketed as healthier were seen as a licence to overeat.

More than 180 adults took part in the Safefood study led by a team from the University of Ulster.

The study supported ‘the health halo’ effect — people perceive the products to be healthier and with fewer calories than the standard food product.

“People weighted out a much bigger portion of the food they perceived to be healthier and to have less calories than the standard version but the products had exactly the same calorie content,” said Dr Faughnan.

Asked what should be done, Dr Faughnan said people should become familiar with nutrition labels when they bought a new food product. “Just have a look, not just at the claim that is on the front of the product, but at the nutrition information at the back,” she said, adding that people should spend a few minutes every few weeks examining the label of a particular food product they buy regularly.

Dr Northup said he hoped the results would help people understand how food is marketed to shoppers. “Food marketers are exploiting consumer desires to be healthy by marketing products as nutritious when, in fact, they’re not,” he said.

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