Food labelling has always been a contentious issue here in the Netherlands. To be quite honest I’m not current on all the arguments or discussions, but I do know new labels have appeared on our food here in the last several months. In the past I’ve heard things off and on about how food manufactures didn’t want a ‘stop light’ system of labelling, because they didn’t want any food clearly labelled as ‘unhealthy’. Supposedly food manufacturers were to be absolutely forbidden from making even indirect health claims about their products. Apparently as well as in the Netherlands there have been disputes between different countries as well.
I also don’t see labelling on all foods, so I’m not sure where it’s mandatory or not. Anyone reading this in other European countries see the same labelling where you are? Does anyone know if we have a standard system yet or not?
As far as I can tell when I look at our new food labels is the food manufactures must have totally won the fight.
The reality of course is these labels are not so much about providing consumer information as they are to teach us to eat more processed foods. Food companies in North America have for decades been making huge profits by teaching people about the different ingredients in food; salt, fat, sugar, oils, protein, etc. By teaching us some are better and some are unhealthy, they make consumers go crazy buying foods without some things, and with extra other things added. Even if there are no explicit health claims on the packages, there are public information campaigns teaching us what and what not to eat.
I’m starting to see that more and more in mass media here, for example on the BBC. I have ad blocking software on my browser, so display ads don’t appear, but increasingly the BBC is running ‘infomercials’, about some new study somewhere that says we should eat more or less of some ingredient that’s commonly found in processed foods, or about how we are supposed to drink more or less alcohol.
On the subject of alcohol consumption there was some controversy recently because the government apparently was citing a study which gave safe alcohol on a weekly basis, but taking the numbers, dividing them by 7, and calling them a safe daily consumption. This was obviously flawed math on the part of the government.
They are very much trying to start the same advertising campaigns and processed food promotions here that led to the obesity problems of North America.
For the record Steph and I are vegetarian, emphasize fresh and local foods over processed ones, buy most of our food from neighborhood organic markets and cook nearly all of our own meals. In particular, we make it a point of sitting down and eating at least one meal together every day.
When you eat meals like this it’s very easy to make a mockery of nearly all dietary advice. For example, the latest advice making the rounds here is no one should eat more than 6g or about 1 tsp of salt every day. There’s no way Steph and I come anywhere near that on any kind of regular basis. Even adding up all the salt we put on our food at the table, the salt in our bread and cheese and the salt we cook with. We occasionally buy other processed foods besides bread and cheese, and even taking into account what these contain, we are still no where close. It’s possible on the odd day we go over a little bit, but I do not consider this any risk to our health.
There is simply no reason for Steph and I to count the salt in all of our foods, or cut down or anything else, unless we want to give ourselves an eating disorder. While there may be some reason to believe eating too much salt is unhealthy, although I can’t confirm this, there is no credible evidence to suggest if you are not eating too much salt that eating less is any healthier for you. In particular there’s no evidence the low salt crazes America has gone through over the years have improved anyone’s health.
There’s a similar argument to be made for calories, protein, fat, oils and everything else that’s supposed to be either good or bad for you. If you eat a varied diet, that doesn’t have too much meat or processed foods, the chances are you meet every credible nutritional guideline ever published without trying.
What are we talking about here?
The picture above is from a bag of ribbled potato chips (crisps). It’s a 200g bag, or a little less than a half pound, in my opinion what a typical consumer would eat over a day or two. A teenager could probably polish it off in an hour. In any case, it’s packaged in the size consumers buy and will mostly be eaten by 1 or 2 people within a short period of time, so it’s not really sensible to talk about the food value of anything but the entire bag and any talk of ‘servings’ is pretty much nonsense.
There are many people who would like to get into an argument over how unhealthy it is to eat a bag of chips like this. It’s an unbelievably emotional subject for many people. I mean, just look at it — it’s a bag of potato chips! Right? What junk! Calories! Fat! Who can justify eating something like that? People on government benefits shouldn’t be allowed to buy food like this — right? To all people like this, all I can say is get over it.
It’s too bad it isn’t easier to buy a higher quality product at a comparable price, in particular potato farmers use a lot of chemicals and potatoes themselves contain a lot of residues. This and the fact they are made in bulk without any sort of quality standards. Otherwise the ingredients from the label above are: Potatoes, Sunflower Oil and Salt. It’s still a processed food, and there are always problems with processed foods, but it’s a lot better than many alternatives. For many centuries before WWII and the Irish Potato Famine, many people lived primarily on these sorts of food ingredients. While I wouldn’t suggest anyone should live only on potato chips, you could do a lot worse.
One of the issues with standard potato chips like these is they are one of the cheapest food alternatives, and the food manufactures want you to buy more expensive foods, and want everyone to think there is something somehow wrong with a food that’s so cheap.
What’s on the Label?
I’m not going to translate every word on the label, but going to Google then selecting Language Tools you can find a translator.
On the bottom is what everyone is suppose to pay the most attention to, from left to right:
Calories: 139 — 7%
Sugars: 0.1g — <1%
Fat: 8.8g — 13%
Saturated Fat: 0.8g — 4%
Sodium: 0.138g — 6%
These are all for a 25g serving, and since the bag is 200g, you have to multiply all these numbers by 8. For your convenience:
Calories: 1112 — 56%
Sugars: 0.8g
Fat: 70.4g — 104%
Saturated Fat: 6.4g — 32%
Sodium: 1.104g — 48%
The percentage figures are GDA or ‘Guideline Daily Amount’. Whatever this means. Maximum or minimum? The package doesn’t say.
So what have we learned here? Is it that when we eat an entire bag of potato chips every day, this alone will put our fat intake 4% over the limit? What happens if we eat two bags a week, can we average out these numbers? Of course we are all focused on that 104% figure, just what exactly are the health consequences of going 4% over the limit?
The fact of the matter is there is no useful information here. It’s not possible to draw any conclusions about how healthy this product is for you, except emotional conclusions.
These figures are solely so consumers have a way of choosing processed foods they eat, and so they think some are healthier than others, without the manufactures making any explicit health claims.
Your post today reminded me of something I saw recently (not to be taken too seriously, but with a grain of truth): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darya-pino/is-it-real-food-flowchart_b_805406.html
Barrett: That’s a great flowchart! Thanks for sharing the link.
Here in Greece we have labels like this in 85% of foods now. The food without label is usually from small companies and I think they will add labels in the next years.
I don’t think that food with label is a bad food. You can find labels in healthy food also. (Now you can’t find any milk without a nutrition label)
For a people with health issues or for someone who make a diet is good to know the calories and gr of protein, sugars or salt.
Hi Mary, thanks for leaving a comment — but I really disagree with you.
I don’t think the ingredients listed have anything to do with health or a good diet. They are only because companies want to sell us more food.
In the same way I think it’s better to buy food from small companies, I think choosing food without a label is a good way to do it. I don’t buy much food from supermarkets, which is why I never really noticed these labels before, and I think it’s a good idea for others to buy their food from places that don’t sell labelled food.
Like many people I don’t drink milk. While drinking a moderate amount may not hurt you, I disagree with the suggestion that milk is a ‘healthy’ food, and there are a lot of people around who agree with me.
Food with this kind of labelling is processed food, and it’s better to eat more natural unprocessed foods.
This sort of food labelling is an important reason why many Americans have weight problems and eating disorders. I grew up in America and saw it first hand!
Patrick,
It is possible that I am not following your logic all the way through, but I do not see how labeling is a particularly harmful act, in and of itself. As a consumer, I prefer to be able to inform myself about what is in something when I do chose processed foods on occasion. I am also able, as an informed consumer, to multiply the “serving” size by the total container. I agree that as a raw measure the % is not particularly useful, but if comparable foods use the same scale, I can use it to compare them easily.
One additional thought…though it does not affect me, I know plenty of people with food allergies that must avoid certain foods. Labeling is certainly helpful to them.
Barrett:
I’m all for labelling for food allergies. This was really a long time coming when they started that, and it took putting some pressure on the food industry to do it. This is a true health issue for many people, and a good example of honest labelling.
Labelling for what I now read the European food industry calls ‘The Big 5’, the ingredients I listed above, has nothing to do with health. This is all about the food industry teaching us what to eat.
Calories:
This is a very old measure, dating back decades, maybe 100 years or more. Literally, this is determined by burning food and measuring the heat that’s given off. Our bodies don’t break down food with fire. There’s no evidence that any conclusion can be made about human health in this way.
People who go on low calorie diets to lose weight, simply don’t succeed. There is no credible evidence to suggest people who eat more or less calories are healthy in any way.
Sugars:
According to the food industry all sugars are the same, and we are supposed to be afraid of them all. According to the food industry HFCS is the same as any other sugar and really we would all be healthier if we drank 5 diet cokes per day.
The reality is there are many different kinds of sugars that behave in different ways in the body, but it’s really only the very processed ones like HFCS that cause any problems. Especially if you make home made food with table sugar or eat fruits or other foods that contain natural sugars, you should feel fine about what you’re eating.
No one should be afraid of eating too much sugar, unless it’s some sort of extreme situation!
Ordinary sugar costs a lot to manufacture, transport and so on. It’s also a low value commodity crop that’s not patented. There’s very little profit in selling it to consumers.
On the other hand processed sugars like corn syrups and the like have massive profit margins, as do artificial sweeteners like aspartame. These are very cheap when made in quantity, and can be sold for huge markups.
Aspartame in particular is a very dangerous product. It has been definitively linked to cancer by a number of studies, including one a few years ago in Italy. It’s also linked to a large number of other health problems, and believed to be addicting. Aspartame is known to cause weight gain, and people who consume it are statistically heavier than people who don’t.
Fat:
Many processed foods contain huge amounts of fat. They also contain many other ingredients that can cause a variety of health problems. Red, factory farm and processed meats are particularly bad in this respect. The food industry response is to identify fat as the problem, and sell low fat foods, but this is nonsense.
Like sugar, there are many different kinds and sources of fat that behave differently in your body.
You should not eat very much meat, if you eat it at all. About a pound per week at the max.
If you don’t eat large amounts of meat, fat is not an issue.
In particular, there is no evidence to suggest a low fat diet has any health consequences!
If you eat dairy products, there are reasons to believe low fat versions might be worse for your health than the full fat versions. The fact is the dairy industry makes high fat products like butter and cheese, and has to find a market for the products left over so they are sold as ‘health food’.
Saturated Fat:
This is primarily a product of processed foods. In order to remove it from processed foods, they have to process it even more with more dubious health consequences. Meats are also high in saturated fats.
If you don’t eat much meat and you don’t eat many processed foods, saturated fat is not an issue.
There’s also no credible evidence to suggest saturated fat by itself is a particular issue.
Salt:
Processed foods can contain a lot of salt, in particular processed meats.
Otherwise the amount of salt that is considered unhealthy by even the most conservative estimates is far beyond what most people eat. In particular, there’s no evidence to suggest eating less salt is somehow healthier than more.
—
Okay, so that was the big 5. The same or similar arguments can be made by going down all ingredients on all food labels. Not only that, if you care to you can delve into the billions and billions of dollars the food industry has spent on scientific studies over the years that basically say nothing, and argue about it for years.
If you think you’re a better consumer because you can read these food labels, it’s only because it’s what the food industry wants you to believe and you are responding to their advertising.
You just linked to a Huffington Post article that was trying to make just this point. This is what people like Michael Pollan has been saying for years. ANY health claims made by the food industry are flawed! There is no such thing as determining the health aspect of food from a list of ingredients.
Increasingly there are more and more people becoming aware of this. You do not need to be afraid of what’s in what you eat; that it has too many calories or not enough protein, or whatever. This is all nonsense. This is very much the American ‘be afraid and consume’ mentality.
You should care about where the food you eat comes from, and the quality of the ingredients. You should eat grass fed pasture meats, if you eat them at all. You should get as much of your food as possible from local sources you trust. You should AVOID FOODS WITH HEALTH CLAIMS, however minor these may be, because these are processed foods. You should eat a reasonably varied diet. As long as you do this, nothing else matters.
Thank you for further explaining your position on these food labels. I see your point how these metrics can draw attention away from what actually constitutes a healthful diet. As in many things, I believe that moderation is the best approach–avoid extremes (like you see in most fad diets, e.g. no carbs, no fat, low calorie, etc.).
Patrick said:
“You should care about where the food you eat comes from, and the quality of the ingredients. You should eat grass fed pasture meats, if you eat them at all. You should get as much of your food as possible from local sources you trust. You should AVOID FOODS WITH HEALTH CLAIMS, however minor these may be, because these are processed foods. You should eat a reasonably varied diet. As long as you do this, nothing else matters.”
I agree with these statements wholeheartedly. In my family, we generally minimize the processed foods we consume and purchase local/organic when possible. We also consider whether the food is US grown or imported and if imported, if it comes from somewhere like China with questionable food safety standards.
With the moderation approach comes acceptance that I will consume processed foods–in moderation. When I’m making my choices, a certain amount of labeling is necessary for me to make informed choices, not only about what I will consume, but what industries I may be supporting. For example, I prefer to buy foods with natural processed sugars rather than HFCS, not for health reasons, but because of the industry behind it. Another example is palm oil, the industry for which is devastating rain forests.
“ANY health claims made by the food industry are flawed!”
Agreed. There is too much of a conflict of interest here.
“There is no such thing as determining the health aspect of food from a list of ingredients.”
Your claims strike me as the opposite extreme, that fat/salt/etc content labeling provides no insight at all into the value of the food. If you have links to studies, I would be happy to peruse them, but this just seems too absolute to be possibly true.
I have studied biochemistry and it is well understood that *to a degree* what you consume will have an effect of weight gain/loss, energy stored in muscles or fat, and, to pick a particular example, the levels of cholesterol in the blood, which is clearly linked to heart disease. How severe that effect and for what extreme of consumption is of course up for debate, but to say that it doesn’t matter is just wrong.
I understand these labels are probably misleading the general population into making choices that do not make sense, but it is pretty clear that we understand enough about metabolism in the body that if you consume fats, saturated fats break down slower and are more likely to be stored rather than burned for energy. Therefore, there is an intuitive response in my moderation approach to consuming too much of this. However, I do not avoid it. The information is not harmful in and of itself. It is only harmful when it is interpreted incorrectly. You seem to be arguing that *no* information is better just so we cannot misinterpret it?
I think the ingredient list is also very important and not just for food allergies. If the food includes chemicals to preserve the longevity of the food or to enhance the flavor, why should I take a risk and consume these. You make the point yourself about the chemical aspartame, which I do avoid. Without ingredient lists, we would be forced to either trust the claims of “natural” by the producers, which would be idiotic, or just avoid all processed foods, which is impractical. Knowing what is in your food does not imply one is being led around by the food industry. Blindly following the % recommendations does, and I certainly do not do that.
Hi Barrett,
Thanks again for your comments.
I didn’t mean to say I objected to an ingredient list. Together with the allergy information, this is important and basic information. I do think however that any ‘analysis’ is misleading, and should not be allowed.
This hasn’t happened in the US as far as I know, but a similar debate is taking place over cigarette labelling is several different countries. It’s long been forbidden here to label the packages with tar and nicotine content, and together with the general advertising and public smoking bans that have come into force here, they’ve also prohibited terms like light, mild or low.
In spite of the ban, for a short time here cigarette manufactures started labelling the tar and nicotine content, saying it was a consumers right to know this information and wasn’t marketing.
The fact of the matter is smokers are so crazed about their habit that any suggestion one brand is healthier than another will lead many to choose it. Australia is even considering selling cigarettes in plain brown or white packaging, because some smokers will still choose the blue package over the red, because they think it’s healthier.
Smoking is smoking, and no brand is safer than any other. By offering smokers a supposedly safe alternative, fewer will stop smoking completely, perhaps thinking this safer alternative would eventually help them to quit. The only safe alternative is to stop completely.
Until recently food ‘analysis’ labelling was illegal here for the same reason. It really has nothing to do with consumer information, and everything to do with manipulating consumers into eating and buying more.
Consumers make better food purchasing decisions when they aren’t offered an analysis, because they are more likely to choose on the basis of overall quality. This is the whole reason the food industry in Europe spent €1 billion on lobbying for the right to label foods this way.
You simply cannot draw any valid conclusions by interpreting the analysis information one way or another, and it doesn’t help anyone ‘understand’ what they are eating any better.
There was frequent talk about not going down the food labelling route of the US, but they did it anyway…
Patrick,
I have to admit, if the analysis is really the problem, I don’t have much argument to defend it. There seems to be little redeeming value, and far more room for consumer manipulation, as you say.
I am enjoying our discussion, so I wanted to draw out one other point you made. There seems to be an implication from your original post that food labeling led directly to the obesity epidemic. I do not have any specific data, but I have never heard this cited as a contributing cause. I do not think you are claiming that this is the sole or predominant factor, but if you are, I would like to know why you think this.
It seems to me that obesity is linked to lifestyle choice, only part of which is what you buy at the grocery store (and could be influenced by labels). The other, more significant factors (IMHO), are lack of activity, and dining out rather than preparing your own meals. This tends to be fueled by our “value” driven consumerism where a bigger burger for the same price is preferred, driving portion sizes up over time until is just gets ridiculous. I am aware of studies that show clearly that people eat what is in front of them and they eat less when they choose their own portions.
I will acknowledge that labeling has crept into restaurant menus, which may or may not be influencing diners to eat out more often (I haven’t read any behavioral studies on this). It does seem to follow your main argument that this offering of a psuedo-healthy choice obscures the fact that dining out is still removing your portion choice, unless you are very disciplined.
Thoughts?
Barrett,
This isn’t really the place to get involved in a big discussion like this. While your comments are welcome, this is turning into a big drain of my time for something that’s probably not of general interest and straying far from the original topic.
There are lots of reasons for the obesity epidemic, and food labelling is just one part of it. The food industry is a big and complicated business.
I don’t agree with you at all that people are responsible for their own obesity, but perhaps this is a topic for another post or maybe even another blog…
People are not 100% at fault for their obesity when foods are designed by food corporations to be addictive,which in turn when you are addicted you buy more and that keeps a perpetual profit going. Similar to places that sell F1 seeds, they want you to buy them year after year, hence once again perpetual profit. Basically you’re on “The Hook”
I agree w/you Pat,
Labels like you point out really don’t help consumers except make them believe they have a “food” that is healthier than something else.
I think hardly anyone is responsible for their own obesity, and I think this is a very destructive way of thinking and talking about the problem.
Very strong statistical links can be made between obesity, related problems like diabetes, and the introduction of processed foods after WWII. A very clear relationship can be made between the introduction of HFCS in soft drinks and obesity. Aspartame is known to stimulate appetite (it makes you crave carbohydrates), and table sugar is known as an appetite suppressant. There’s no particular connection between sugar and weight gain. People who consume aspartame are statistically heavier than those who don’t.
Like I said earlier, when people try to lose weight by limiting their calories, or indeed any other way, they don’t succeed and tend to gain more weight later as a result of trying. In fact there’s no real evidence of a connection between calories and weight, except it’s known a low calorie diet causes temporary weight loss.
How can you blame people for being overweight, when things that cause weight gain are added to our food in a way we don’t have any control over, and every technique for losing weight actually makes you gain more weight?
Quitting smoking makes you gain weight, and in terms of health this is a very good trade-off for anyone to make.
A number of credible studies have suggested your weight is mostly determined before the age of 3, and if during these first few years you don’t have access to good food, you’re pretty much doomed to a life of weight problems.
Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma deals with this kind of thing in more depth. In particular after WWII our food production changed to a system of using fossil fuels to grow corn (in Europe this is soy), and use this to make nearly everything we eat. There’s very good reason to believe this change is the major reason we have problems with obesity and other diet related health problems. There are also clear differences to be seen between Europe and the US in this regard.
Food labelling, and the associated media promotion and culture that goes along with it, simply allows us to identify good food and bad food and criticize others for what they eat. This just leads to a vicious cycle of weight gain and eating disorders that America is famous for, but are also present and becoming more common in other countries.
An overweight person drinking a full sugar (not made with HFCS) Coke is probably doing as much as anything else to lose weight, because at least they’re drinking something that isn’t linked to weight gain and will suppress their appetite. Just think how much a part of our culture it is to criticize someone like that?
It’s also worth noting that in many ways the health consequences of being overweight, while real, are often grossly overstated. Overweight people usually lead happy and healthy lives, except for the fact they are criticized by others. Is it really necessary to draw attention to them and make them stand out? They’re people too.