Misleading Marketing Claims

Boost Your Immunity! Protect Healthy Joints! Improve Brain Development! Reduce Cholesterol! Regulate Digestion!

Can food products really do all that?

Don't believe everything you read or hear about a food product, even if it's printed right on the front of the package. Many food packages contain a variety of statements that can be confusing or misleading.

Attempts to sell large quantities of products sometimes causes food manufacturers to make claims that are not entirely factual. For example, an advertisement for a particular brand of bread claimed the bread had fewer calories per slice than its competitors. What the advertiser did not say was that the bread was sliced much thinner than other brands. So, by volume, the calories were actually equivalent.

Claims like "low fat" and "high in fiber" didn't begin to show up much on the fronts of food packages until around 1994, when the Nutrition Facts panel was required for every food package, under the provisions of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act.

Until then, the FDA said that health claims were drug claims and food companies had to do what drug companies have to: prove safety and effectiveness. But manufacturers argued that since they were required to put potentially negative nutrition information on their foods (for example, the number of calories or grams of fat), they should also be allowed to point out their products' positives. Congress agreed and told the FDA to allow health claims that were backed up by a reasonable amount of science. After that, front-of-package claims exploded.

To get an idea of why we consumers are so confused, check out the complexity of this Food Labeling Guide from the FDA.

For definitions, on what is allowed in claims about calories, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium & sugars, check out this chart.

Here are six potentially misleading claims on food labels: lightly sweetened, a good source of fiber, strengthens your immune system, made with real fruit, made with whole grains, all natural. Here's a great article in the NY Times explaining why those six claims are meaningless.

Our advice is to be skeptical about everything you read on the front of a food package. Look at the ingredient list and food labels on the back of the package for more accurate information.