Deceptive Food Packaging : When Foods Aren't What They Seem

Deceptive Food Packaging: When Foods Aren't What They Seem

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Did you know that while Lucky Charms cereal says "Whole Grain" on the package, it also contains almost as much sugar?  (11 grams of whole grain per serving, and 10 grams of sugar)  So you might buy Lucky Charms thinking it was a nutritious cereal since it has whole grain, but you'd be consuming an unhealthy amount of sugar with every bowl - which isn't healthy at all!

Food manufacturers are notoriously good at these types of labeling deceptions.  It's not an outright lie, but it definitely puts forth a particular message about the food - which may not be true at all.

Here's another example.  "Strawberry Sensation"  Fruit Roll-Ups from General Mills actually contain no strawberries whatsoever!  And some Kellogg's cereals with pictures of strawberries on the box don't contain any strawberries either!

Read the article here, for a list of 9 foods that are deceptively labeled.

If consumers don't know what's in the food they're buying, or have to read the "fine print" on the ingredients to see if nutrition claims made on the packaging are true, it  makes it much harder to eat healthy!  Can your kids think of some other examples of foods where the packaging is deceiving and the food looks healthier than it really is?

I was buying a can of fruit the other day and the can said "no added sugar", which I thought was a wonderful thing until I read more closely and discovered the fruit was sweetened with the artificial sweetener Splenda instead!  Yuck!  Go through your kitchen and see what you can discover!