How is it legal to advertise something as healthy, when it is almost half sugar?
I saw a product advertised on TV the other day, a so called healthy cereal bar. They looked good, so next time I went to the store I kept an eye out for them.
I found the product in my supermarket, and had a look at the ingredients.
The product in mention, is advertised as having 8 grams of sugar. This would lead you to think, that the bars have 1 gram of sugar each, as there are 8 bars in a box.
After further reading the deceptive box and the small print, you come to realize that it is actually 8 grams of sugar per bar, and that each bar is 20 grams total. Almost half of the entire bar is processed sugar.
This product is advertised on TV, by a nice lady with family-values-style images and bleached teeth.
The commercial and box, both give health advice, such as: Eat well, exercise, and eat their bar for a healthy life.
How does a small brick of sugar end up on a shelf, advertised as healthy, with green traffic light logos next to the ingredients, all indicating how healthy the ingredients are.
I thought there were supposed to be groups of stuffy PC people who are in charge of stopping stuff like that from happening.
How does something like this happen? and what can be done about it.
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The problem is that there is no legal definition of “healthy”. So anyone can say that anything is healthy, pretty much.
There’s no legal definition of healthy firstly (as @downtide mentioned) additionally there are sketchy legal loopholes on labeling etc. anyway. I forget the details but one example is of the ingredients labels. There are actual chemical/non-natural ingredients which cleverly by their inventors/patent holders etc. are named as if they are. You really have to research your stuff to find out whether “natural flavors” as an ingredient is actually natural or not.
That’s of course not even taking into account the fact that even when flavoring or coloring is natural we don’t as consumers really consider what that means. Many of the colors and flavors we eat in our food today that fall under natural flavors and natural colors are made from weird stuff we can’t imagine actually eating whether it be animal hair or bone or various animal secretions or little crushed beetles. Without even knowing it the average American is participating in a fear factor level buffet & through the great trick of labeling legalities we are blind to that fact and therefore able to munch away on a variety of critter parts and critter farts (so to speak).
We can thank the government and FDA for screwing that up for us. Groups that are supposed to protect the people getting tainted with the almighty dollar. The only real way to combat it on a large scale is through some level of mass education and that would take it’s own multiple generations worth of effort & money in order to accomplish any real change.
The only real solution on a small scale is for one to care enough to be personally responsible and informed about what they do and don’t put in their mouths/bodies/minds etc. That takes time and research and effort & the average person will likely choose the lazy route and continue eating bug parts labeled as “natural coloring” so they won’t have to think about it. Our nation’s processed foods are all just a big Jedi Mind trick so we can feel like we’re not eating those things we consider weird when we are watching some Bizarre foods show on the Food network when in fact we are not much different than those folks we see on tv eating all manner of random grossness and weirdness.
Yes I also find that kind of thing odd, some healthy cereals are filled with fats and sugars. I’ve known for ages that so called “health” bars are as healthy as or the same as eating a chocolate. My rule is, if it occurs naturally its healthy. Any man made processed or designed food is treated with suspicion by me. However I do indulge still!!
The amount of sugar, fat, protein, etc in a food product is based on serving size. You have to look at the serving size to figure how much sugar you are actually eating. It might be one bar, as you found out on this particular item, it cam even be one bar is two servings, you can never assume.
Catch words and phrases like healthy, light, low fat, are not as reguated as you would like to think. Someone whose main concern is all natural ingredients might be fine with eating something with sugar as long as there are not additives in the product. Even catch phrases like no cholesterol can be sort of deceptive, because the consumer thinks it is healthy. The item must have no cholesterol to advertise that, but it can be laden with fat. A lot of potato chip companies advertise no cholesterol, potato chips never had. Cholesterol, even back in the day before we worried about it, but once American’s became obsessed with checking their cholesterol numbers, packaged food started adding that advertising to their food product if they could say the item had no cholesterol. They do it with trans fats now.
Basically you have to read the labels on everything and never assume, and never get sucked in my advertising.
Welcome to America. I read somewhere a wise person saying, “if it has more than 4 ingredients it’s junk food. Period.”
Oh crap! I thought Europe had better disclosure laws that we do. Now I’m really sad.
Because words like healthy, natural, etc. are not regulated. Now, if they make a health claim (i.e. prevents heart disease) then they would have to go through the proper channels for approval prior to labeling the product as such. But otherwise it’s a free for all – for the most part. Kind of scary to think about, since most people aren’t aware of these loopholes and end up falling prey to these claims, thus consuming products that aren’t as healthy as the labels suggest…
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