Tricks and delusions in food

How food manufacturers outsmart and deceive consumers

19/07/2013

Many food manufacturers advertise their products with references to packaging such as "Free from preservatives" or "Without artificial flavors". Consumer advocates warn against such Verklausulierungen. For the customer is usually not clear that "free from" usually means "but instead". Frequently, the ingredients are only exchanged for others and the consumer is misled. On the occasion of the biennial existence of the internet portal Lebensmittelklarheit.de, consumer advocates take a closer look at the "free from" instructions.

Consumers are often led astray with food such as "free from" food
If a product contains the word "free from", it means that one ingredient is avoided, but is usually replaced by another. This is usually not unhealthy. It is "more about lack of transparency," said Martin Rücker of the consumer organization Foodwatch told the news agency "dpa".

For example, "free of artificial flavors" usually does not mean that there are no flavors in products such as strawberry yoghurt. Instead of the artificial, natural flavorings are often used, explains Rücker. "Although they taste the same as strawberries, they do not necessarily have anything to do with strawberries." It does not matter from which starting material the flavor is made, as long as it is not artificial. Even wood or paper could be used, for example. "They can extract flavors from the wildest stuff," says the Foodwatch expert.

Even the note "free of flavor enhancers" does not really hold what he promises. As Rücker explains, products sometimes contain yeast extract instead of flavor enhancers. "This is not a flavor enhancer before the food law, but it has a flavor enhancing effect." Officially, the manufacturers then use only one other ingredient, although in fact a substance with exactly this effect is added.

Many ingredients of food are not harmful to health but a deception on the consumer
Silke Schwartau of the consumer center Hamburg reports to the news agency that even with the note "free of artificial dyes" is deeply gripped in the box of tricks. Because similar to the flavors, the artificial dyes would simply be replaced by natural ones. For example, with strawberry yoghurt, beetroot juice is often included as a coloring agent. This is not harmful to health but a consumer illusion, so Schwartau.

Also, the imprint "free of added sugars" by no means meant that no fructose was contained in a product. "A cereal, for example, can still be very sweet, because there are fruits in it, which naturally contain a lot of sugar," explains the consumer advocate. Also of clues such as "30 percent less sugar" customers should not be misled. Because it could still contain much more sugar than in a similar product from another manufacturer, Schwartau points out. The 30 percent would only refer to the original recipe of the product. A look at the nutritional value table can provide information.

"Preservatives free" is also among the clues that could easily deceive consumers. For example, acetic acid has been used to conserve food for thousands of years, but according to the law, it does not have to be labeled as a preservative, Schwartau explains. Therefore, it is included in many products bearing the label "Free from preservatives".

Consumer advocates call for more transparency in food labeling
Foodwatch calls for more effective, legal action against consumer delusion. Oliver Huizinga, food advertising expert at Foodwatch, takes stock of the two-year existence of the consumer advocacy platform "Lebensmittelklarheit.de": "For two years, Ms. Aigner happily promotes an awareness-raising page on label fraud, from the accompanying research to the portal. that changes in the law are necessary - but, on the whole, they have done practically nothing. "It would simply not be enough if the portal made some products more honest. In the supermarkets, consumers would have to be protected from being deceived by hundreds of thousands of foods. "The job of the minister is to protect consumers from everyday fraud - they obviously want to sit out until the end of their term," says Huizinga.

Foodwatch's goal is to uncover anti-consumer practices in the food industry and fight for consumers' right to healthy, quality food. For example, the organization awards a negative prize each year for the boldest advertising lies in children's food, for which this year Capri-Sonne by Wild, Monster-Backe Knister by Ehrmann, Paula by Dr. med. Oetker, Pom-Bear were nominated by humorfrisch and Kosmostars by Nestlé. You can vote on the website of the campaign. (Ag)

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Foodwatch: Advertising lies in children's food