Six Meaningless Claims on Food Lables

[Dace]

I thought this was worth sharing.


http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/six-meaningless-claims-on-food-labels/

 

[savingdogs]

Interesting report.

I'm on a low sodium diet and I would add to that list "lower sodium" because very often foods listed that way are still extremely salty.

 

[Wifezilla]

With eggs, you can also add "cage-free" to that list. Instead of little cages they just pack them in to a big warehouse. They still can't move around much.

Another one that burns me up is "vegetarian fed". Chickens aren't vegetarians!!! Given the chance they will eat bugs, mice, snakes, etc... If they aren't getting animal protein, it is because they are locked in cages (or a building) and not allowed to eat their natural diet.

 

[Dace]

Technically even the term Free Range is meaningless. It literally means that there is access to outdoors, but the grower can choose to open it for 10 seconds. Not much free ranging done under those conditions.

Pastured hens is the only way to go.

 

[lupinfarm]

I agree with "free range"

We call our hens free range, because truth is from 9am to 5pm in the winter they are outside and not in a pen or run. In the summer they are out of their house and pen/run from more like 7am-7pm

I hate hate hate the "free run" its so misleading. I rode at a stable owned by a big chicken farmer and his chickens were "free run" and my friends bought eggs from his place over US and were like "oh we're getting free range"


no you're not, you're getting eggs from a place where they have a huge warehouse that a bunch of chickens run around in. That's not free range.

 

[murphysranch]

Many states have stricter rules for restaurants than the FDA has for processed foods. I know that in CA, we exceed federally mandated definitions and guidelines for descriptions on menus. Orange County (S. CA) is the very strictest of all counties. Fresh, wild, low, lower, organic, less, etc...

 

[enjoy the ride]

Let's see- Premium (on most things,) Harris Grass Feed Beef (well they ate some grass before they were put in the feed lot to grain up,) 100 % of your daily vitamin requirement (of one vitamin,) apple cider vinegar (made with artificial apple flavor and white vinegar,) etc.

As my sister once said, even salt has sugar put in it.

 

[peachykeen]

It really bothers me, this crap is everywhere now! Advertising Fruit Loops as healthy for kids because it has fiber artificially added in. Puh-lease.

Even healthier choice fruit juices that are supposed to be all natural and real fruit are misleading. I paid 5 bucks for a supposdely healthy juice and got home to read the ingredients more carefully.

 

[Jamsoundsgood]

When my brother was in high school he worked in a plant that made fruit punch. It always cracked him up that in really small letters on the label it said "Less than" and in really big letters it said "5% fruit juice." The reality was in a vat the size of my living room filled with corn syrup, water, and artificial colors and flavors, they would pour one can of frozen juice concentrate. Like the kind we buy at the grocery store. My husband thinks it's weird that now I'm rather religious about buying juice that says 100% on the front and I still check the back for the ingredient list (well, when we don't make our own). Hmmmm....I wonder why.

 

[patandchickens]

There for a while, Spaghettios had a big thingie splashed across the label touting Extra Calcium! or Excellent Source Of Calcium! or some such business.

As far as I could tell, what they were referring to was the calcium somethingorother-ate added as a preservative agent, and that always *had* been added, and that indeed still IS added even though the labels seem to have dropped the calcium claim.




Pat, with a nostalgic fondness for Spaghettios (they were a special rare 'treat' when I was growing up, so now I have to buy a few cans per year Just Because, which is the only reason I know this stuff )