10 "healthy" food labels, exposed (CBC Marketplace)

this week on marketplace consumers are screwed when they're faced with all these labels our second annual top 10 countdown of lousy labels some stinks we reveal the spin on health claims food that claims to make us stronger smarter healthier consumers are smart shoppers is dumb we name companies who takes the prize for worst this is the ingredient that's possibly linked to cancer have you been hoodwinked we're doing a top-10 countdown and this item is number one what do you think about that we're taking a trip to the grocery store putting the labels on food to the test seems everything's promising a little extra sounds too good to be true along for some sleuthing the founder of an Ottawa clinic dedicated to helping people eat healthy dr. yoni friedhof it says it's less sodium all right let's talk that it easy to spot a buzzword here a vague claim there consumers should be protected against the wily food manufacturers who are making a lot of money selling us foods that aren't particularly healthy but telling us that they are hey Charlie Angie Forrester is a busy working mom trust what's on the label to help make healthy choices I don't have a whole lot of time when I'm running through the grocery aisle and so I'm gonna pick up on certain words that are on the package and not necessarily recognize that maybe there's a play on words so we are filling our baskets with some of those questionable claims let's grab one of these guys for breakfast claims all over that one for in the pasta aisle well I see one right away says it's gonna make me smart I have a couple others I need a few of those the freezer section no unpronounceable ingredients well that must be healthy and check out so we can head out for our top 10 countdown of lousy labels let's see what we've got in our marketplace labels lab first up number 10 on our list Campbell's healthy request soup lots of feel-good ingredients like whole grains and vegetables and 25% less sodium than Campbell's other soups but you might read that and think that it's going to be a low sodium choice but if you want to look at the label and try to figure out what's in it you're gonna have to do some pretty fancy math that's because this Bowl holds 398 milliliters of soup but the nutritional information on the side only for 250 mils just 2/3 of the container who's gonna eat 2/3 of this container of soup no I wouldn't I don't put it up I need the whole thing and if you do that the actual amount of sodium in this healthy request soup climbs to 750 milligrams that's more sodium than this entire bag of salt and vinegar chips and that's half of the recommended daily amount in one serving of soup in one serving of soup that says it has 25% less sodium than comparable soup and it breaks labeling rules when a product can clearly be eaten by one person at a single eating occasion the company's gotta come clean spell out the nutritional info for the whole thing but when we call Campbell's hi I'm calling about your healthy request soup they tell us the amount Canadians choose to eat will vary depending on their individual lifestyle and dietary needs you know what I think that's a lousy label sure is Charlie are you finished we find number 9 on our list back at Angie foresters house oh great let's get those balls cleaned up Kellogg's nutrigrain bars and super fruit flavors everything about it implies health get a load of the buzzwords on these cereal bars real fruit filling super fruit flavors like pomegranate even the name implies nutrition let's check out these Kellogg's nutrigrain bars but this nutrition expert says there's barely any super fruit in there it's chock full of refined flour and I see a product where you're getting just over three teaspoons of sugar per bar three teaspoons in one of these bars that's right let's look at the ingredient we don't sugarcoat things with Angie if you were to have a breakfast bar for seven days every day of the week yep this is how much sugar you'd be consuming oh my gosh looks like we're baking a cake that's a lot of sugar there you go have some breakfast yeah wow that's an incredible amount of sugar it really is we called Kellogg's and they tell us nutrition has been the driving force behind Kellogg's since its founding in 1906 but we find it's a lousy label that brings us to number eight on our lousy label hit list wonder plus white with fibre bread a new product from an old company for generations Wonder Bread has been your favorite that's rebranding itself as healthy for joyful nutrition people buy this bread because they think they're getting the benefit of fiber with it the company is sprinkling on some oat hollow fibers trying to convince people that they're no longer consuming white bread here's how it works we know whole oats are good for us but now food manufacturers are taking the oat hulls grounding them into a powder and adding it to food sure it bumps up the fiber in your bread but it's missing all the nutrition so the whole grains that we talked about wanting for our breads are completely missing in this product I'm calling about your wonder plus white with fiber the makers of wonder + Weston bakeries tell us oat hull fiber adds fiber to bread we agree that it does not have the same nutritional benefit of whole grains pretty misleading berry therefore a lot of label next up clocking in at number seven Kraft Dinner smart look at him now there's a half serving of cauliflower in that bowl of Katy smart yep even that age-old meal in a box now comes in three so-called smart version II smart the same great Katy taste and vegetable high fiber and flax Omega 3 but at a higher price this version has omega-3 that can be a boost to your brain eyes and heart the problem Studies on Omega 3 show that there is benefit to the consumption of the fish based omega-3s but those same studies say that there is not the same benefit with the plant-based stuff sure enough our bodies can convert the kind of omega-3 that's in this Kraft Dinner into the good for you kind but to get the same amount of omega-3 in this piece of fish you'd need to eat 177 servings but it says it's a sensible solution a bit nice big green logo right on the top of this box yeah and that's according to craft so Kraft gets to decide what's sensible and what's not sensible I don't think it's sensible to be trying to get Omega 3s from flax and I don't think it's sensible to consider Kraft Dinner to ever particularly be a smart choice we call Kraft and they tell us this is simply another way for moms to get some omega-3 into their family's diet if you had dumb choice to buy the smart Katie wouldn't be one I'd make let's make it a lousy label when we come back closing in on number one on our lousy labels countdown okay now what do I give my son for lunch we're taking a bite out of the food industry's health claims counting down our top ten lousy labels to get the skinny on marketing healthy food we go to Matthew Diamond hi Matthew his marketing agency designs packaging for food companies all hoping you'll buy their spin it's a really competitive environment in retail I mean we call it the jungle how appealing is a health claim to someone when they're in the grocery store I mean if it's the right health claim and if you've drilled on the right insight absolutely it can help drive sales of the product how well do you think people actually understand the healthy buzz words that are showing up on packages we have a term that we use here which says you know consumers are smart shoppers is dumb and I say that in a nice way I think consumers are savvy but when you get into that grocery environment you don't have a lot of time you're staring at a shelf you're confused they simply want to know that an effort has been made to make it a better choice which brings us to our next example number six prevention ookies made by LeClair the boxer is covered with healthy buzzwords the cookies are shaped like hearts and then there's the name prevention compared to the Claire's other brand these little cookies come at a hefty price how healthy are these cookies the data on antioxidants have actually been extremely disappointing over the years we run the risk of people thinking that now they can eat as many cookies as they want because here they're these are healthy cookies their prevention cookies they will prevent problems and we discover companies can't imply food prevents disease without proving it first but these packages with messages about helping your heart and digestion and called prevention on the shelf the food industry it's like a teenager it's going to push as hard as it can as far as it can till someone snacks them on the rest and unfortunately there's nobody doing much in the way of wrist smacking in this and LeClair they tell us Health Canada allowed our product on the market based on the fact that the information was true and not misleading we heartily disagree Selassie late to track down our next lousy label we head to Christy Harkins house wondering if we can do some snooping in your kitchen number five on our list McCain pizza pockets I could come home with a stack like this a pizza pockets my kids would love me forever this processed Pizza snack has a new healthy image and a Facebook campaign to match I'm Charlie I'm on a mission to get my mom to buy me McCain pizza pockets choosing sir bathroom the fact is I'm simple wholesome ingredients one of the big things about the advertising campaign is it has no unpronounceable ingredient what do you think the foods we give our children that's what we're building our children out of I don't think we should be building our kids out of pizza pockets even if you can pronounce the ingredients in them cuz check this out two pizza pockets have more fat than these donuts and more sodium than these fries we call McCain why are you marketing these as wholesome and they tell us our consumers told us they wanted food made with real ingredients that are recognizable and pronounceable well we pronounce this a lousy label what chance do people have figuring this all out consumers are screwed when they're faced with a table of choices like this at the end of the day the average person does not have the time the knowledge or necessarily the inclination to sort through this up next at number four Oasis help break Colette's use the carton is covered with all things healthy almost every inch and chances are that's intentional says marketer Matthew diamond there's a lot of psychology that goes into shopping and so oftentimes it's the combination of the word the color a visual icon because we know most often consumers are shopping a bit on autopilot so if you can disrupt something and actually attach a certain emotion then you've got a chance of making that sale but dr. yoni freed hoff says the claims about this juice are hard to swallow if you're worried about your cholesterol I'm not sure that taking your medicine with sugar is a wise plan that's because to get any possible benefit from the plant sterols you'd need to drink two glasses of this juice a day do that every day and in a week you've taken in almost a pound of sugar the label also claims to get the plant sterols and those two glasses of juice you need to eat 80 oranges or 22 kilograms of broccoli and they're also suggesting that you can get away with not bothering with all that green broccoli instead you can just drink this sweet delicious juice in fact the Canadian Food Inspection Agency recently told the makers of Oasis lisanna to take that claim off the carton so they have but left the other buzzwords and what's lisanna tell us Colette's prevent juice is intended for people who are concerned about their cholesterol level or have a family history of this condition but we say condition lousy for Colet we come back the company that tops are lousy labels list this item is number one on our list what do you think about that we're counting down lousy labels taking on healthy claims that are anything but number three carnation breakfast essentials the latest healthy take on a product that's been around since the 60s carnation breakfast essential supplies the nutrients of a balanced breakfast basically what this is is nine and a half teaspoons of sugar with some vitamins and minerals added in for good measure that's right this breakfast substitute has 1/3 more sugar than this bottle of coke we call Nestle the company that makes carnation why do you market this is healthy when there's so much sugar in it and they tell us the product provides a good breakfast choice with energy protein and other nutrients for the often rushed and on-the-go consumer but we've soured on this sweet breakfast drink ready for number two on our lousy labels list Dan active probiotic drink made by international yogurt giant denim be ready with 10 active the company says people drink more than a hundred and twenty bottles of it every second around the world take on life's daily Channel with a healthy diet including Dan active this weekly pack comes with the phrase your natural defenses will love a daily bottle of Dan active and says it's scientifically proven okay go get your shoes on come on Andy we're gonna go to school that's why Angie Forster drinks it every day we're always fighting some sort of latest bug and so I'm looking for anything that can help boost my immunity but we check and discover that phrase is actually a health claim the kind the company can only make if they prove it first it's possible that over time they'll be a robust enough set of data to say some clear-cut this will reduce your risk of getting this that or the other right now clearly that data isn't available and in the US the company paid a twenty 1 million dollar settlement for claiming Dan active helps prevent colds and flu without the proof and take a look we track down the same product in Europe looks a lot different no immunity boosting claims on this package because in Europe companies have to get the okay before putting claims on their products in Canada companies are supposed to get approval for claims like this too but we learn denaun never did it blows me away that they're able to give me the impression that this is boosting my immunity if that's not the case denaun tells us non-active is one of the most studied food products in the world we remain committed to a science-based approach to claim any benefits so what do you think I think it's a lousy label so what product do we think deserves to be number one maple leaf natural selections meets the label says no preservatives added yeah Sam in the fridge in the container that's why Christy Harkin buys it if I see something that has no nitrates in it and I'm more inclined to take that than the one that isn't advertising that like a lot of people Harkins trying to avoid added nitrites a preservative often used in processed meat study after study finds that eating relatively small amounts of processed meat is a convincing cause of colorectal cancer one reason could be the nitrite the World Cancer Research Fund found that a 48 gram serving which is a third of that package eaten on a daily basis increases colon cancer risk by 20% that's pretty dramatic the word nitrites not on the label on natural selections so we wonder what preservatives are in this ham send it off to a lab for testing and guess what natural selections with no preservatives added as as much nitrite as maple leaves other deli meat turns out this simple sounding ingredient cultured celery extract is actually a nitrite by another name for all intents and purposes it is bio chemically identical to the sodium nitrite that we would be seeing in cured products this is the ingredient that's possibly linked to cancer it's one of the things we think might be causing deli meats or processed meats to have some ribs we share our test results with Christy Harkin guess what we found there are nitrates in this meat that stinks okay now what do I give my son for lunch to feel a little mislead oh yeah most definitely and for some answers we head to Maple Leafs head office to meet chief food safety officer Brad huffman people have concerns about nitrites if you look at this package where does it say anywhere on it that it contains nitrites well we care deeply about the integrity of the products that we produce and and the labeling is accurate these days people know that that's a nitrite if you went to the grocery store and ask somebody cultured celery extract is that a nitrite who would know that well these these labels are developed in conjunction with and with the oversight of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency the Canadian Cancer Society the American Cancer Society the public health agency of Canada and many others have told people to steer clear or limit their intake of processed meat and say that nitrites might be an element of that concern are they wrong well nitrite is very misunderstood nitrates actually part of a healthy balanced diet it's in a variety of foods that we eat every day we're doing a top 10 countdown of misleading health claims on food packages and this item made the Leafs natural selections line is number one on our list what do you think about that we listen closely and if in the future if consumers need additional information will evolve with that and guess what after our interview days before this story airs Maple Leaf tells us they're changing the label in the future they're going to spell out their natural selections meats have nitrites in the ingredients we say better late than never cuz labels that fudge the ingredients are just plain lousy

Channel: CBC News

Views: 829,478

Rating: 4.7898955 out of 5

Keywords: CBC News, CBCNews, CBC broadcasting media, public broadcasting news, Canadian News, Canadian Broadcasting Corportation (TV network), CBC News Network, food, Food (TV Genre), Food Processing (Industry), health food, healthy living, health, processed food, nutrition, marketplace, cbc marketplace, marketplace cbc

Id: opwBw-O_UaY

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/phillybrownpants]

Not a big fan of the report. Most of the stuff is taken out of context. Such as having white bread with fibre that should be compared to whole grain. When they have whole grain bread as a different product. So wtf would you compare both if both are offered separately. I dont figure white bread is the same as whole grain just because the white bread is packaged with a label that reads fibre.

Then the report thinks that parents might think pizza pockets are a great food for kids. FUCK. What parent thinks feeding kids pizza pockets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is a possible great rounded meal. If a food producer labels the products as being better than an existing product I expect just that. I dont expect them to give me a wonderful balanced meal.

Read the label, make the calculations yourself. We blame kids and parents for having smart phones but they come with calculators. How many people dont read the price per quantity at the store to determine the best deal. If it isnt listed, work it out. With a calculator you have to be mentally handicapped not to be able to do it. I might even take the argument that americans have to do complex equations (complex being google does it for you) because its not in the metric system. In canada its in 10s, 100s, and 1000s.