Heather Bedard, C.H.E.
Food advertisers put $190 billion US dollars into marketing groceries so that you, the consumer, will buy their products.[1] Marketing is a study on psychology and what makes people want to do things. This includes colors, wording, size, weight etc.
When you look at any product, don’t just take it at face value, turn it over and look at what it is made of. The front is generally the main marketing campaign composed of bright colors catching your attention and bringing feelings of energy and action, or more natural, simple, earth-tones that make you feel as though the choice you’re making is environmentally friendly, straight from the earth, or healthy.
When you look at a product, take note of your sub conscious. What are you thinking when you look at it? Why are you drawn to it? Some energy bars have a picture of someone climbing on it. Wow, look at that energy. If someone doing something that active eats a bar like this, then this is sure to give me the energy and vitality I’m looking for. If I eat this, maybe I can do that one day, or even subconsciously, I am doing that activity.
Natural sweeteners or "health" foods are often green, white, and brown. This brings thoughts of nature, green – go – good. In our minds, simple = better for me.
Think about the feel of the packaging. Does it feel textured, natural, recycled. Notice the color and pictures on the front. Perhaps pictures of nature like trees, leaves, and birds. This stirs feelings such as peaceful, calming, and accessible. Perhaps this product will bring these things to my body.
Organic
Let’s look even deeper into the wording and labels on packaging. There a couple things to keep in mind on the outset when looking at organic foods. First, organic branding by the USDA is very expensive. Many farms, especially outside of the US, don’t have the money to put into the licensing. Their products are grown just the same, they just can’t afford the label. It takes more time but contacting the company directly can give you some peace of mind.
Secondly, The USDA’s website defines organic as follows: “USDA certified organic foods are grown and processed according to federal guidelines addressing, among many factors, soil quality, animal raising practices, pest and weed control, and use of additives. Organic producers rely on natural substances and physical, mechanical, or biologically based farming methods to the fullest extent possible. Produce can be called organic if it’s certified to have grown on soil that had no prohibited substances applied for three years prior to harvest. Prohibited substances include most synthetic fertilizers and pesticides."
The organic label is beneficial in that you know it doesn’t contain chemical pesticides…mostly; however, organic farmers do use some pesticides. Not all organic pesticides are safe as consumers learned with the recall of Rotenone which was found to be damaging to the environment and humans in large doses. It gets worse, there ARE 25 synthetic pesticides that ARE approved for organic use according to the USDA’s National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.
Thirdly, with an organic food, you also know that it doesn’t contain genetically modified organisms which is helpful when looking at products that contain wheat, corn, and soy, which are 90% GMO in the US.
Fourthly, you should know that there are 4 different ways that companies can label organic products.[2]
1) They can be 100% organic meaning they contain 100% organic ingredients or they designate this using an asterisk. This is typically used on whole or minimally processed products
2) It can be labeled organic if 95% of the ingredients are organic. The other 5% can be nonorganic only if they are not commercially available as organic and must be included in the National List[3]
3) If it says, “Made with organic…” 70% of the ingredients must be made with organically produced ingredients. It can name up to 3 ingredients or categories that are organic but cannot state it’s made with organic ingredients, the finished product is organic, or have the organic label.
4) If the product is made with less than 70% organic ingredients, individual ingredients can be labeled as organic such as “Ingredients: water, barley, beans, organic tomatoes, salt.”
Bottom line with organic products is you still have to read the labels! It’s also important to remember that just because it is organic cane sugar, doesn’t make that sugar any better for you. Sugar is sugar is sugar. When it comes to produce, eating fresh fruits and veggies is always better than not. Wash your fruits and veggies thoroughly, or you can even soak them in a solution of 10 cups water and ¼ cup white vinegar for 2 minutes to remove, pesticides, larvae and dirt. Thoroughly drying and then storing them in glass jars will help your produce to last longer as well.
All Natural and Natural Flavors
Next, look for labels such as “All-natural”. There is no regulation on what makes a food natural. Butter, salt, and water are all natural ingredients and if the product contains this, then it could quite likely be considered made with all-natural ingredients. You’ll want to pay special attention to that phrase made with vs 100%. The manufacturers love to play semantics and these words are regulated by the FDA. Just because it’s made with natural ingredients doesn’t mean the whole product contains them or that its any healthier for you. This goes for natural flavors as well. Manufacturers are not required to label where the flavor is sourced from and what the chemical make up is. As long as it begins as a plant or animal that’s all that really matters. The FDA puts it like this: “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.” (4)
Did you catch that? Natural flavorings don’t make the food more nutritious. Don’t let the term fool you. Many other solvents and additives are added that are not so natural and are considered "incidental". The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association classifies them as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) and they are not up for review by the FDA. (5) However companies are allowed to voluntarily submit their GRAS constituent for review. Hmmm
These Generally Recognized as Safe flavor complexes are generally recognized as safe in the small amount present in the food. But that begs the question, have these chemicals been tested in conjunction with others and the effect on the body, as well as how to determine when that moderate threshold has been attained? Just for the pleasure of knowing, look up castoreum, benzaldehyde, and amyl acetate. Why are these flavors in the products? Pasteurization destroys many of the flavor compounds of the food and so flavor must be added in, processing destroys many of the same, and many companies want their products to have a consistency of flavor. Natural (and artificial) flavors accomplish this for them. This is why it is so important to always check the label on the back and not rely on healthy phrases on the front. Look at the ingredients!
Sugar Free
Ok, this one really irks me. Food companies know you want less sugar and so they find ways to make you think you’re having less sugar when really that item is just as bad for you. Sometimes the things they use as fillers in place of the sugar, like dextrose, sucralose, and aspartame can be worse for you than just eating pure cane sugar. And just so you know, anything less than ½ gram per serving is considered “sugar-free”. One trick manufacturers use is making the serving size smaller to reach that magical ½ gram but the average person is actually consuming more than that. One example would be coffee creamers. Some serving sizes of sugar free brands are only 1 tsp! I don’t know about you, but I have never had just 1 tsp of creamer in my coffee! The question is, by the time you’ve consumed even a reasonable portion of the food, have you consumed more sugar than you wanted to?
Many companies use the divide and conquer strategy on their labeling. Ingredients are listed on the label in order by weight. So, the ingredient with the most weight in the product will be first. They know you don’t want an energy bar with cane sugar listed as one of the first ingredients. So, sometimes you’ll notice that cane sugar is pretty far down the list of ingredients. However, other sugars such as tapioca syrup, barley malt extract, and brown rice syrup are right up at the front. These are all just other names of sugar sweeteners. And most of many energy bars, by weight, consists of them. These sugars are also highly processed so it’s better for your body if you can find, or make, something that uses fruit or whole foods to sweeten products. This is hard to come by which makes bars like this something we would put at the top of our food pyramid as a treat or eaten rarely. The phrase, ‘No added sugar’ is another one of my favorite sugar labels. This can be used when a factory is packaging a product which has already been processed somewhere else and the final factory doesn’t add any sugar or using artificial sweeteners. Sneaky!
Low Fat or Keto
Moving on to the words, low fat or keto. Both of these words or phrases tell you automatically that there is a good amount of processing in this food item. Fats are best eaten as a whole food. Your body is able to process it better and take what it wants and leave what it doesn’t want. Products like this, contain high amounts of fat without the levels of macro and micro nutrients it needs to balance it out. Keto is a diet meant for certain, very serious, diseases and should be used under the care of a doctor and not be used as a way to lose weight. More on that in another article. My thoughts, avoid these foods. Low fat foods are similar in that they are highly processed. Many low fat products include higher levels of sugars and other additives to make up for the loss of flavor and consistency from the fat. These products are marketed like this because they know people want a “healthy” alternative to their familiar junk foods, and this should be an automatic signal that this is not a health promoting product.
Fortified Foods
Lastly, watch for fortified foods such as cereals or breads fortified with iron or vitamin D. Fortified foods are foods that have nutrients added to them that were not in the food in its original state. Enriched products have more vitamins and minerals added to them that were in the original food. This is a signal to you that the original food product has been processed and the original vitamins and minerals stripped from it. The manufacturer will then spray or add vitamins, typically synthetic, to increase the nutrient levels. Your body does not receive vitamins well this way! Your body was designed to extract just the right amount of nutrients from a whole food and these amounts are tightly controlled moment to moment. When you hit your body with a dose of isolated vitamins or minerals it doesn’t know what to do with it and it can upset the balance of the body. These synthetic vitamins are not absorbed as well, and are often excreted, so it is not a fair exchange of nutrition. Stay away from fortified foods and eat them in their whole, natural form.
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[1] https://www.statista.com/topics/2223/food-advertising/ [2] https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/labeling#labeled%20no%20cert [3] https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/national-list
[5]