Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Tricks of The Food Trade

If the Nutrition Facts section onfood packaginglist all the substances that go into afoodproduct, how can they deceive consumers? Here are a few of the most common ways:

One of the most common tricks is todistribute sugars among manyingredientsso that sugars don't appear in the top three. For example, a manufacturer may use a combination of sucrose, high-fructosecorn syrup, corn syrup solids, brownsugar, dextrose and other sugar ingredients to make sure none of them are present in large enough quantities to attain a top position on theingredients list(remember, the ingredients are listed in order of their proportion in the food, with the most common ingredients listed first).

This fools consumers intothinkingthe 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 topad the list with miniscule amounts of great-sounding ingredients. You see this in personal careproductsand shampoo, too, wherecompaniesclaim to offer "herbal" shampoos that have practically no detectable levels of realherbsin them. In foods, companies pad the ingredients lists with healthy-soundingberries, 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 yourhealth. This trick is called "label padding" and it's commonly used by junkfood manufacturerswho want to jump on the health food bandwagon without actually producinghealthyfoods.

Learn more:http://www.naturalnews.com/021929.html#ixzz1sR4oyJLn

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