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We saw a report recently on food labels and how accurate they really are. Seems that they aren’t quite as accurate as most of would like to believe. The problem I see is that most people do count on the labeling to be reasonably accurate. But what if they are not? How wrong can we get??? I count on them to be accurate because I deal with diabetes. Many people have weight problems, either high or low, and need the labeling to be accurate there too.
For instance, a person wishing to lose weight believes the packaging label and eats whatever the item is. Then, they cannot understand why they have not lost weight. A person who is counting carbs believes the label and consumes more than they really should but they think they are only eating a certain number. People who are diabetic and need accuracy in the labels are also surprised when their blood sugar is higher than they believed it should be. What’s happening here?
The truth is there is little real truth in the labeling. The fact is that the government is allowing a 20% difference between what the label says and what it actually is. 20% OVER acceptable levels. So, what’s happening here is that your favorite brand of food is giving you way more than you thought it was. This could actually put some people in trouble nutritionally.
Good Morning America had some products tested and the results were not encouraging, to say the least. Wonderbread has 70% more total fat than advertised, Ritz crackers have 36% more sodium. There were many more. The problem is that each and every one of the products they had tested had more than the label stated. When contacted, the companies that were willing to address the issue stated that this was only one of those products and products do vary in content due to the machines that make and package them. While I do agree that is true, I also believe that the labels need to be much more accurate than they actually are.
In another case of the government having “double speak” (what a shocker), “No” does mean that there is none of that element in that product. However, ZERO does not mean none. The manufacturers are actually allowed to say ZERO when it contains up to .5 grams of an ingredient. What that means is that if you were looking for a product that has no saturated fat in it, and the label says a ZERO, there is the possibility that there is saturated fat in it up to a half gram. On the other hand, if you see on the packaging that it says NO saturated fat, then there is no saturated fat in it at all.
Now, this gets a bit sticky when you want to eat a few cookies and the label says there are ZERO trans fats in them. So, you eat a few. Who can eat just one? Those cookies could have up to a half gram of trans fats EACH!!! The government says that they can have trans fats in the product even though it also says trans fats are dangerous for us. Frankly, the government talks out of both sides of it’s mouth. The problem there is that the whole thing is so confusing that it’s likely that we should not eat at all!! Ever. Not if we do not know what’s in the product we are about to consume.
So, we are now in a pickle. What do we believe? Unless you grow all your own food, you have to depend on a labeling system that isn’t accurate. Is it any wonder that people get sicker even though they read the labels. From the consumer point of view, I believe that this is a legal scam the companies are putting on us. It’s universal too. GMA’s testing people literally found that each product tested had MORE than the label stated. MORE! That’s more fat, more sodium, more calories, more carbs and sugars. This could be dangerous to many of us.
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