Lots of people want to eat healthier and the food industry knows it, but they don’t always make it easy. How many times have you stood in the supermarket aisle reading labels and trying to decide which item to buy, but the health claims on food labels only left you more confused? That’s because many of them are just marketing terms that don’t actually mean anything. You’re better off focusing on the things in the food, like fiber, sugar and fat, and ignoring terms like these that can be misleading and useless.
- “Multigrain” - While it sounds good, multigrain simply means that there’s more than one type of grain in the food, not that the grains are healthy.
- “Antioxidants” - Sure, they’re really good for you, but antioxidants are best when found in whole foods, like blueberries and kale. So when you see that term on a box of processed food, that doesn’t make it healthy.
- “Good source of…” - Don’t get too excited when a package says something is a “good source of fiber” or a “good source of calcium” because all it really means is that the food contains as little as 10% of the daily value. And that’s not a lot, so don’t get too excited about it.
- “Artisanal” - This term isn’t regulated as a food label, it just means a food has been made in batches in a traditional way and there’s a good chance they slapped the word on the package to make the product sound better.
- “Made with real fruit” - All this really means is there’s a very small amount of fruit in there and it’s often just fruit juice concentrate. Read the ingredients and if fruit is at the top of the list, then there is a lot of fruit in there.
- “Sugar free” - According to FDA guidelines, this means a food must contain less than 0.5 grams of sugar. This means a small amount of sugar can be in the product, plus it doesn’t cover sweeteners like agave, brown rice syrup or sugar alcohols.
- “Superfood” - This word makes us think of nutritionally dense foods like spinach, but “superfood” is really just a marketing buzzword used to make something sound super healthy. It’s not regulated, so it can be used on anything, even if there’s barely any of the “superfood” in it.
Source: Woman's Day