photo credit: Whatsername?
Read Labels Every Time You Shop–Ingredients Often Change without Notice
I have learned about label reading the hard way. Everything in the product matters. Every single ingredient. Unless you know what it is you are buying, you could be buying trouble. My father-in-law former U.S. Senator R. Vance Hartke (deceased) was one of the sponsors of the original food labeling bill. He helped pass the law, but like most of us, he didn’t know enough about the ingredients and chemicals that now constitute much of our processed foods. Knowing how to interpret the labels is just as important as having labels on products. Scrutiny is the operative word.
One important thing I have learned is that food manufacturers use the numbers on the label to hide things, for instance separating sugars into several different categories (sugars, carbs) to make it seem like there is less sugar in the product. Or, deceptively using serving size to make the numbers smaller.
I have taken to avoiding the numbers altogether, and reading the prose on the label. I look the ingredients list, and at the order of the ingredients as an indication of how much of each thing is in the box or can. I also have learned that anything that ends in -ose is a form of sugar, for instance, fructose, dextrose, maltose, etc. And, sometimes several forms of sugar can be found in one product.
Now,there is an i phone app, Don’t Eat That, which my blogger friend, Peggy Webb of Local Nourishment blog demonstrated for me yesterday. It is a downloadable app which lists 1500 questionable ingredients, including which are GMO’s (visit Institute for Responsible Technology, for more info on why to avoid genetically modified ingredients). Reason alone to switch to an iphone for me, (as much as I love my Nextel/Sprint).
Speaking of knowing what is in your food….for those of you trying to avoid gluten, a reader of Passionate Homemaking blog has asked food bloggers to share this “consumer alert”. I have elected to remove the brand names, because the important message is that this can happen to any foodstuff, at any time. To eat healthy, vigilance will always be required, even with trusted brand name products.
She wrote:
Pass this along to people you think may be interested. I just purchased a loaf of the 7 sprouted grains bread from a popular health bread brand. I looked at the ingredients at home and noticed that they are now adding organic wheat gluten.
I called and spoke with the company. They confirmed the change and attempted to explain why. I just voiced as a consumer I do not want the gluten added and will no longer buy their products. All their sprouted grain breads and english muffins are changing to contain organic wheat gluten (not sprouted wheat gluten). Their pastas, tortillas, and cereals will remain the same and will not be reformulated to contain the organic wheat gluten. They are making no changes in the packaging to alert you of the ingredients change. Most people probably won’t notice the change right away. This is very similar to a major soy milk brand changing to non organic soy beans, removing the “organic” wording and leaving the packaging and price the same. It took several months for the public and organizations to learn of the change.
Do you have any ingredient label reading” tips” to share with our other blog readers? If so, please add them to the comments on this post!
Love your blog, by the way. What a great, centralized resource for all real food and local farm info.
11 Comments
Excellent article! I’m one of those who tends not to read the label on things that I buy often, so that’s a useful warning for me.
Just downloaded the iPhone app and can’t wait to take it for a spin.
Great Betsy, when I saw the app yesterday I was very impressed, so had to share it with my readers. Now I want an i phone!!! Let me know how the app works for you.
I’ve been using the iPhone app not only for myself, but for my kids. When there’s a processed food item they are begging for, I’ll hand them the app and say, “Look up the ingredients and decide if the taste of this is really worth what’s in it.” It rarely is.
The app also has an “allergies” feature so I can look up processed food ingredients to tell if it is corn derived (corn being one of our allergy triggers.) I buy processed food very rarely, so reading labels isn’t a full-time job for me, but I gotta say: this app really helps take the guesswork out of it.
.-= Local Nourishment´s last blog ..Super Bowl Sunday food =-.
What a great app. It’s good to know that more people will be enlightened as to what is in the foods they are eating. Thanks for sharing!
My favorite label/mislabel story is Spectrum’s “Organic Olive Oil Mayonnaise”. The first ingredient is soybean/canola oil…. NOT olive oil, which is 4th ingredient on the label, just before filtered water….
I called them to complain, and they said they could not make a good mayonnaise with olive oil. My suggestion was that they not CALL it Olive Oil Mayonnaise, then. I make a good olive oil mayonnaise – the husband and daughter will eat it, and like it, too… so I suspect it has a lot more to do with cost than with taste. On their web site, they add “Artisan” to the description, too (not on the label, but misleading anyway).
Today I saw soy lecithin in “American Cheese,” just an example of stuffing GMO soy into every product to take up space and weight. Soy lecithin is the waste product of soy oil production. It is even in most candy in the US, even the quality stuff and Celestial Seasonings teas. Lets start a list!
“Your Right to Know” by the National Food Safety Center contains a small
take -along booklet which helps to identify those products which contain GMOs.
What amazes me is that most people DON’T read labels and have no idea what they are ingesting! You must be diligent–even Briars ice cream, which was my fall back, grocery store brand (vanilla only) has reformulated and contains HFCS now, but still says it is all “natural”.
Mary Marlowe–i’m happy to hear that I am not the only one who has noticed the olive oil mayo ingredients (in fact, all mayo–soybean oil!) I finally gave up looking for one and now make my own. There is one french brand that I used to be able to find here in michigan (but no longer) that was in refridgerated section. It was actually made with eggs and had a good ingredient list! (i forgot the name–something “and fils”)
Hey Mary and Sylvia–I heard yesterday that many olive oils are actually olive oil mixed with canola or soy oil, and that they don’t even have to mention this on the label!!
Unbelievable.
I have heard that horror about the olive oils too. What do I do – I am allergic to soy! It’s crazy :/
.-= Meagan´s last blog ..Monster "Smashies" (cookies) =-.
Meagan,
There is a way to test for aduterated olive oil. Refrigerate the oil for a couple of hours. If it gets thcker, it is probably pure. If it does not get thicker, it probably contains soy or canola.
hmm. this might be the thing that makes me get an Iphone!
Thanks for the tip.
I could go on and on about annoying food labeling here in Australia.
Stay vigilant, shoppers!!