7 tricks food manufacturers use to make you think their food is healthy

EVERY business that sells food tries to make it seem as appetising as possible. That’s why TV ads never brag about a mediocre flavour or sodium content.

No brand will stick around if it brags, “Our product tastes great, but it could lead to a heart attack!”

But if you’re a health-conscious consumer, you’re going to want to be aware of health halos, or labelling terminology that implies that what you’re about to buy is more nutritious than it actually is. 

The term “health halo” has been around for at least 20 years, and virtually any food or drink product has a health halo attached to it. The problem for the consumer is that a health halo never tells the full story, just part of it, and too often, when we come across them, we assume the best out of the product.

So what are some of the health halos that you should pay attention to? Here are some of the most famous, or infamous, ones.

All Natural, 100% Natural, Natural

The word “natural” on a food label is practically meaningless, according to Margot Vigeant, a food scientist and professor of chemical engineering at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Vigeant said that “any product that isn’t using artificial flavors can bill itself as ‘all natural.’”

And sure, you may be excited to know that there aren’t artificial flavors in your all-natural snack or meal. But the problem is when you let those two words do too much for your thinking.

“Many consumers infer from that that the product is healthful,” Vigeant said.

But there’s a good chance it isn’t. “An ‘all natural’ food can still have significant quantities of sugar or salt or other ingredients that are unhealthful in excess,” Vigeant said.

Fat-Free Or Anything Else That Is ‘Free,’ Like Sugar-Free

“This is a tricky one because it is both true and very important for some consumers that a product is completely free from a particular ingredient that they may be sensitive to or allergic to,” Vigeant said. “It’s very important that labels like this exist and are clear and easy for consumers to find.”

And she said that “if a company puts 100% fat-free on a label, it’s generally true.”

Some health halos are good. It’s fine to be a little cynical about a health halo, but don’t automatically assume the worst.

But “the negative outcome arises when some consumers turn ‘This product is free from a thing that is bad for me’ into ‘Because this product is not bad, it is good for me,’” Vigeant said. “That flip can lead to a consumer treating a fat-free or gluten-free cookie as a health food, even though it’s still a cookie.”

Fat-free or sugar-free may be what you’re looking for, but it doesn’t mean it’s sodium-free, artificial sweetener-free, preservative-free or calorie-free.

No High Fructose Corn Syrup

High-fructose corn syrup, often shortened to HFCS, is a processed sugar. Your taste buds love it, but your liver may not, and consuming a lot of HFCS or other sugars may lead to your body creating excess fat.

Even if we don’t know that, a lot of us see “no high-fructose corn syrup” on the packaging and we figure, “Cool. I can buy this, and no harm done.”

But that’s not necessarily the case, said Ali Besharat, a marketing professor at the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. Besharat studies consumer behaviour and decision-making.

The “no high-fructose corn syrup” phrase, he said, “implies that absence of this specific sweetener makes the product healthy or lower in sugar.”

It’s probably neither. “Manufacturers frequently replace HFCS with cane sugar, beet sugar or tapioca syrup, sweeteners that are metabolically nearly identical to HFCS. Thus, this label creates a health halo that distracts from the total sugar load,” Besharat said.

Multigrain

This, too, is a health halo. If grains were living, breathing people, a whole grain would be a certified fitness instructor who mountain bikes in her spare time, and a refined grain would be asleep in his underwear, sprawled out on the sofa, a little spittle on his chin and a few cartons of empty ice cream on his ample lap.

Whole grains are full of fiber, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. When you eat whole grains, you’re on a glide path toward lower cholesterol, lower weight and lower blood pressure. Refined grains, meanwhile, have removed the good stuff, like fiber, minerals, vitamins and antioxidants.

(That said, as some food products’ health halos will tell you, some refined grains are enriched, which means some of the vitamins and minerals have been put back. That’s still not considered as healthy as whole grains.)

Food manufacturers like working with refined grains because they can be stored longer without spoiling, and a lot of people are fans of the flavor (white bread, for example, is made of refined grains).

So what’s the issue with a product being marked “multigrain”?

Maybe nothing — and indeed, the term multigrain really literally tells you nothing about the product. A multigrain may be healthy or not at all.

“It implies whole grain, high fiber and complex carbohydrates,” Besharat said. “Multigrain is a semantic trick. It simply means that more than one type of grain was used in the recipe. It doesn’t require any of those grains to be whole grains.”

High Protein

Protein has been riding a wave for a few years, and everybody seems to want more of it.

Protein is certainly important for your body’s bones, skin, blood and cartilage. It can help with weight loss and building muscle. So maybe it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that if the public wants protein, food companies are going to give it to them.

If you see the word “protein” on food packaging, you should definitely look at it skeptically, Besharat said, explaining that, nowadays, you’ll find it on everything from snacks to cereals.

The protein halo is often used “to mask extreme levels of sugar,” Besharat said. “A protein bar can contain 20 grams of sugar and high levels of carbs, but the presence of 10 grams of isolated soy or whey protein allows it to be marketed in the fitness aisle.”

It’s also worth noting that too much protein can be unhealthy for people. It can lead to heart attacks, strokes and some types of cancer. 

Fiber

Fiber has been having a moment lately, with some experts suggesting it’ll soon be as popular as protein. There’s even a term for eating a lot of fiber: fibermaxxing.

Fiber is mostly in plant foods (fruits, vegetables, grains, etc). If you eat foods with a lot of fiber, you have a better chance of seeing lower numbers on your scale, and consuming fiber can help lower your odds of getting diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer.

So if you see that a food or drink product has the word “fiber” on it, that’s a good thing, but we could probably be getting more fiber from foods that aren’t in a lot of packaging. Head over to the produce aisle, said Dr. Grant Fowler, chair of family medicine at the Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

“Ideally, you want to be eating fresh fruits and vegetables, fish and a lot of whole grains,” Fowler said. “With a lot of products that have fiber on the packaging, the fiber is all chopped up.”

‘Healthy’ Pictures

Another thing to look out for are the images, said Debbie Danowski, associate professor of communication and media at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, and the author of an upcoming book, “Images of Health in Food Advertising: Misleading Marketing and the Health Belief Model.”

Health halo images on food packages can sway a consumer into thinking a product is healthier than it really is, Danowski said. You might see “colors or images associated with nature, or whole, unprocessed, genuine foods,” she said.

An apple-flavoured breakfast bar might show pictures of apples on the box, even though what you’re about to eat isn’t anywhere close to as nutritious as an actual apple.

Danowski said you also might see images that promote a healthy lifestyle, like seeing pictures on the packaging of “exercise, playing sports and healthy activities.”

So if you see somebody jogging, mountain climbing or biking on your package of food — well, that’s a health halo. The food item may help you be the fitness buff you hope to be, but don’t assume that. Before putting it in your cart, you’ll still want to look at the label’s ingredients.

And that really is the lesson of all health halos on food packaging. Read the label, the entire label, and don’t let a few flashy phrases or pictures distract you from your mission of healthier eating. It’s a strategy born from innumerable clichés. We look before we leap, we don’t judge a book by its cover, and when examining a box of cereal, canned meat or a carton of juice, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.