How food manufacturers trick consumers with deceptive ingredients lists

Deceiving consumers: Tricks of the food trade

If the Nutrition Facts section on food packaging list all the substances that go into a food product, how can they deceive consumers? Here are a few of the most common ways:

One of the most common tricks is to distribute sugars among many ingredients so that sugars don't appear in the top three. For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of

sucrose
high-fructose corn syrup
corn syrup solids
brown sugar
dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on the ingredients list (remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).

This fools consumers into thinking the food product isn't really made mostly of sugar while, in reality, the majority ingredients could all be different forms of sugar. It's a way to artificially shift sugar farther down the ingredients list and thereby misinform consumers about the sugar content of the whole product.

Another trick is to pad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients:

You see this in personal care products and shampoo, too, where companies claim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of real herbs in them. In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-sounding berries, herbs or superfoods that are often only present in miniscule amounts. Having "spirulina" appear at the end of the ingredients list is practically meaningless. There's not enough spirulina in the food to have any real effect on your health. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junk food manufacturers who want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producing healthy foods.




This article was taken from: natrualnews