Healthy or junk food? Busting food labels (CBC Marketplace)

we're hitting the grocery store baskets enhan eyes focused on popular food products investigating whether companies are playing fast and loose when it comes to food labeling start the day with Nutella everything from breakfast to dinner healthy request sounds good I'm told we're finding a healthy diet of food planes on a percent natural garden vegetable bread with veggies seems that's the height these days but our company claims supported by the facts or is it just food fiction how important to the labeling claims to your decision that's the first thing I look at I'm a dad so I like to get you know certain types of nutrition to my boys they're still growing so they need a lot of protein quite a bit I used to be not in the best of health so it became habit over time to find out about these healthy food claims we check out I meet up with a guy who can help us read between the lines hey dr. yoni freed HOF runs a Health and Nutrition Center in Ottawa he's been called Canada's nutritional watchdog how would you describe some of the marketing tactics companies used to get people to buy their stuff well they'll use anything in everything that they can to try to convince consumers that what's in those packages is health food how successful do you think the marketing is I think it's extremely successful every aisle of the supermarket is preying on us they're preying on our psychologies they're preying on our beliefs it's not fair let's start with the first meal of the day a popular breakfast item Nutella you know the one that's spreading the message that breakfast loves Nutella knives spoons and fingers and cheeks neighbors roasted hazelnuts breakfast loves Nutella precious Chong's family loves it to her nine-year-old son Jack eats this sweet treat three times a week these nuts for Nutella delicious she first ate the stuff as a child in Europe and says now it's a staple in her home when you're serving Nutella for jack in the morning how much do you give him like between a teaspoon a tablespoon fall in his oatmeal do you know anything about the ingredients I'm gonna tell her I know it's like hazelnuts and sugar any idea how much sugars in there I don't know the manufacturer says it can be part of a balanced breakfast but isn't it tell a really a good way to start the day what do you think of this product well I think that it is spreadable candy candy why well basically everything you spread on that piece of bread will be sugar so just how much sugar does Nutella pack it says each serving is 1 tablespoon so I'm going to just get a tablespoon of this and that has 11 grams of sugar okay here we go Nutella really it's a bit of whey powder so we'll put some whey powder and it's a bit of skim milk powder so we'll put that to some cocoa powder we've got cocoa powder and now everybody knows there's hazelnuts in there but I don't know if everybody knows that there's only two and a half hazelnuts in that tablespoon then there is just shy one gram shy of three teaspoons of sugar that is a ton of sugar on my toast it is a lot of sugar on your toast and you know a lot of people they say well you know we know it's not healthy but I'm not sure people know just how much this actually is all that sugar in just one serving and free thinks people are eating more than that the label it's swimming in Nutella I wonder if 2 tablespoons would make it look more like that label and once you make it 2 tablespoons of Nutella you're eating 5 and a half teaspoons of sugar and that's not all you've got another ingredient down there what's that I do this is chocolate icing do you think there's a comparison well in fact there is less sugar tablespoon for tablespoon in this chocolate icing than in that Nutella the company says it doesn't promote the nutritional value of Nutella if you eat it with some whole grain toast fruit and milk it can be part of a complete breakfast but that's little consolation for our Toronto mom in a serving of Nutella which is a tablespoon there are 11 grams of sugar Wow do you know how much that is no it's almost 3 teaspoons that's a lot sugar so basically I'm giving a chocolate bar to my son for breakfast the fact that Nutella markets itself as a breakfast food sells itself that way and knowing how much sugars in it how do you feel about that oh I mean it's a sham it shouldn't be a breakfast food it should be like dessert the latest in a long list of unhappy nutella fans a couple of years ago the manufacturer made national news in the US when it was sued for false advertising I thought it was at least as nutritious as peanut butter maybe a little bit more and that was just the impression I got from the commercial the company had to pay its customers three million dollars they may have tweaked their advertising to tone down the impression it's healthy but this sugar cop says it's still leaving a false impression why are companies allowed to market their products as though they're good for you companies are allowed to say whatever they can get away with saying now they're like teenagers their job is to push the envelope to see what they can get away with to sell as much product as possible one of the slogans for this product is breakfast loves Nutella well kids may love Nutella and maybe breakfast does too but I'm not so sure that health let's put this one away indeed time for us to turn the tables on this label change food fiction into food fact so let's make breakfast love centella Nutella love sugar with breakfast done time for lunch healthy request sounds good I'm told throw it in you bet so we pick up some Campbell's healthy request soup so when you see the word healthy request on that what does that mean to you it would mean to me there would be more vegetables in there I would have some type of whole-grain in there healthier crust well I'd have to look at the ingredients before I figured ah salty so I would think yeah that's something that I would consider so just how healthy is this soup so we've got this Campbell's soup it's called healthy request and there are a lot of health related things on this label there's no question that label screams healthy I mean it even if you look at the spoon you don't see soup you just see a spoonful of vegetables right above a logo that's got a heart with the word healthy on top of it so this is I would imagine the marketing point is heart healthy soup so let's look at the amount of sodium in here it has 470 milligrams of sodium per serving how's that number well first 470 milligrams of sodium in a serving of soup might not be a small number for someone who is worried and concerned for real reasons about sodium so people with heart disease that's actually quite a lot for a serving of soup but I have a question how much is the serving of soup in this case says per serving of two hundred and fifty milliliters but this has almost 400 in it in this container and so that would be almost 750 milligrams of sodium in that container if you ate the whole thing now I wonder who wouldn't eat the whole thing I mean look at this container so it is a single serve container I say that because you can't reseal it says it uses the standard serving size for soup set by the government that way shoppers can make a fair comparison but it looks as if Campbell's could be breaking government rules around labeling if a food product could reasonably be eaten at a single sitting the company has to give you the nutritional info for the whole container how misleading is it then to give the sodium for a serving size that is not the entire thing I think it's very misleading you know especially when you've got a container that clearly is something people would regularly consume all at once and that's not the only food fiction going on if you want to know how much sodium it's the same amount of sodium as you would get if you ate this entire bowl of potato chips you wouldn't sit down and eat an entire big bowl of potato chips like that no and if you're making your own vegetable soup at home the likelihood of you putting that much sodium in is quite low so this healthy request soup not so healthy back at the grocery store we give shoppers the scoop about this soup do you think that's a healthy request they have healthy requests on here it's got that much sodium in it yeah how do you feel about the claim it doesn't seem healthy at all so time for another label makeover let's turn Campbell's healthy request soup into Campbell's salty request soup when we come back more popular names and marketing games is this 100% fruit bar 100% healthy yeah that's something that I'd probably stay away from and later what crafty claims are you being served for dinner well that's what it is what lousy label bugs you snap a photo and share it with us on Facebook and Twitter [Music] Tom and I are on the move through the grocery aisles looking for products that claim to be good for you trying to separate food facts from food fiction we've checked out breakfast next up on the lunch menu oh here we go garden vegetable bread with veggies with our sue perfect combo okay we've got Dempster's garden vegetable bread what do you think when you see that label yeah good for you right well I think that it should be better for you it should give you a bit more of your daily vegetable intake so does it back in the kitchen we asked our nutritional watchdog dr. Jana freed ha the packaging is covered in carrots what does it suggest to you I think it suggests probably to me into most people that that loaf of bread has a lot of carrots in it carrots have plenty of nutrients so what's Dempster's serving up parents are known for their vitamin A let's see how much vitamin A is in here per serving it says a serving is two slices and you would get six percent of your daily recommended allowance for vitamin A how much is that in terms of actual carrot actually not a lot so if you actually wanted to get your vitamin A from a carrot source an actual vegetable the amount of carrot you'd need to eat is just over about a gram worth of carrot which I'm guessing is roughly this much so pretty misleading I think it's very misleading and I think really what it speaks to is that when you put vegetables in a food the processing strips away their nutrition eating a carrot is not the same thing as eating carrots that were placed into processed food even if many are put in their nutrition gets stripped out Dempster's says two slices of their garden vegetable bread has a half serving of veggies but after processing there aren't a lot of vitamins so if you ate the entire loaf of this bread how much carrot would you get well for a medium-sized carrot it would be about a seventh of the carrot if I ate the entire loaf of bread that much vitamin A that's correct Dempster says the label is factually accurate but our grocery shoppers are still frustrated with that tiny amount of vitamins you have to eat the entire loaf to get the vitamin A equivalent of a carrot that big that just seems like a lie the immediate reaction is kind of like has he got me but a big thing on the front like that that says garden vegetable and those are vegetables which would have vitamin A in them I think that's pretty much it to me that's it it's leading so the actual amount of vitamin A in this bread gets an F yes and ask for food fiction time for another label makeover let's turn Dempster's garden vegetable bread into stem stirs where's the veggie next on our shopping list were on the hunt for a mid-afternoon snack grocery aisles these days are filled with food labels making all kinds of fruit claims look at those five percent fruit check this one out made by Sun right it's called fruit source 100 percent fruit bars how can you go wrong these are the things that go into lunchboxes and you know stuff like that you see 100 percent fruit and you would think okay that's like an apple or it's like an orange or a pear or something time to find out if this fruit bar is as good for you as you think if we look at the Nutrition Facts 29 grams of sugar in every bar so how much sugar is that well the amount of sugar in each one of these bars is the same amount of sugar you get if you ate one two four five six and a half Oreo cookies and I don't think many parents would be sending their kids with six and a half Oreo cookies worth of sugar to school every day and thinking that was helpful well you'd never do that parents think this is a healthy alternative not six and a half Oreos worth of sugar that's right shoppers are shocked there's that much sugar in one bar single one of these bars has 29 grams of sugar okay that's equivalent of six and a half Oreo cookies yeah that's something that I probably stay away from well though it would be surprising to me the there's that much I'd rather have the six and a half Oreo cookies we called Sun ripe and they said that this product is derived from 100% fruit and I believe that fruit started their processing chain right this is a processed food and the processing of fruit changes its nutrition this again is candy candy masquerading as fruit is still candy now you might know all that sugar in this fruit bar is natural and adds up once it's processed but are you getting the good stuff too strawberries are known for their vitamin C so let's see per bar how much vitamin C you get and it says 2% of your daily allowance how much is that it's not a lot so if you were to consume one strawberry mm-hmm and you wanted to get the same amount of vitamin C from those bars you'd have to eat six of them truthfully I think the only thing that we should be able to market as actual fruit is actual fruit but not so sweet facts call out for another label makeover given all that sugar let's call Son ripe son hype when we come back a popular pasta with our clever spin that's preying on people's hope and it's your turn to give food makers a piece of your mind just be honest hey watchdogs got a product you think we should test email us at Market Place at cbc.ca we're scanning the grocery aisles for popular products on the lookout for misleading marketing claims we've checked out breakfast lunch and a snack so what's for dinner kraft dinner too smart yep Kraft has come out with a line of products to appeal to health-conscious parents out there it's called Kady smart with high-fiber veggies even one with omega-3 sure sounds healthy Kraft Dinner smart to get flax Omega Omega 3 so you see that kind of label what do you think I see flax which I know it's kind of good for me I see Omega 3 which blood-pressure I think I should be having that do you think this is a healthier alternative to regular Kady I would think so yeah I mean just from the flax Omega 3 nor artificial flavors colors preservatives here's an unappetizing fact all three smart brands cost more than regular Kady so what exactly are you getting for that higher price we asked nutrition expert dr. yoni freehoff starting with Katy smart with veggies all the ingredients it says it's got freeze-dried cauliflower so how much are you getting in each serving not an awful lot I mean this is Kraft Dinner and if you crunch the numbers you want to see how much for instance vitamin C worth of cauliflower you'll get in a serving it's 2 tablespoons that's only an eighth of a cup yep for every serving of this Katy smart about a third of the box you're getting the vitamin C found in two tablespoons of cauliflower the other brand that they have here is Crafton or smart high fiber and the ingredient says this one has oat hollow fiber in it how much are we getting any serving of this you're getting the equivalent of fiber as consuming roughly an apple and on paper that sounds great except there's health benefits to the consumption of fruits and vegetables and whole grains we don't have the same wealth of evidence to suggest that if we take just the fiber out of those foods and add it to Kady that suddenly it will make Kady healthful I think that's a stretch finally the Katy smart with Omega 3 with flax is there enough in the box to make a difference to your health how much will make it free are you getting in this well so the evidence in omega 3 suggests that the best sources of omega 3 are fish sources and our bodies actually convert flax into the same types as you would get from fish but we do it very inefficiently so just how much Katey smart would you need to eat in order to get the omega-3 you get in this piece of fish try 177 servings this is not health food you know if people want to eat Kraft inert gay Kraft Dinner it's one of the rights of childhood but to do it and think you're being smart about it well that's food fiction back at the grocery store shoppers think when we found is hard to stomach we did some calculations on this yeah you have to have 177 servings about 44 boxes of this to get the omega-3 that you get out of one serving of salmon so what it is I think it's really kind of selling the consumer really short in terms of what they're actually looking to gain from this products you call the misleading why do you think it's misleading well because they're saying it's a smart choice for eating and it's not it's not Kraft admits there's not a ton of nutritional value with this trio but says they're a choice for parents with picky kids we've decided their marketing is just a little too crafty so bring on a new label Katy smart say hello to Katy not so smart dr. yoni Fred HOF says the Bucks should stop with government it needs to take more responsibility to make sure food labels aren't misleading we shouldn't be forced as consumers to study nutrition labels to see if the claim is on the Front's are accurate I tend to waggle my finger most at the government for allowing the claims that we see on these packages to exist in the first place we ask the government agency responsible for making sure these products aren't misleading for an on-camera interview about our findings no luck we want to talk to all the companies on camera about this food fiction - but they say no the food makers may not be talking but we know you've got something to say to them just be honest you don't have to go through this people will stood by your father if it displeased probably sell your product just as well if you were and you are probably losing a certain segment of the market like me they're eating us into buying what they what they have either we'd have to change the laws about what they can say or we as consumers have to be more educated they really have to be more I think deliberate with putting the actual ingredients more on the forefront instead of more transparent or more transparent instead of the buzzwords that people seem to be picking up on you're eating it - you're feeding your kids this stuff - you know it's time for change and that's a food label clean up in the grocery aisle next week on marketplace checkout charity it's giving to a good cause so how come we don't always feel good doing it as soon as I see that there was a campaign going on I think oh brother here we go again while stores raise millions we're left to wonder what's in it for them they don't tell you that at the checkout counter there's no accountability some believe there's a different better way give me a reason to do it beyond feeling good doing good but feeling bad that's next week [Music] you

Channel: CBC News

Views: 2,223,666

Rating: 4.6285014 out of 5

Keywords: CBC News CBCNews CBC broadcasting media public broadcasting news Canadian News, Canadian Broadcasting Corportation (TV network), CBC News Network, CBC News.ca, Lousy Labels, Food (TV Genre), Health (Industry), Cooking, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (TV Network), Kitchen

Id: kUKOt_SvTQc

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 13 2015