Supermarkets are strategically designed to make you spend.
Front of packet labeling is deliberately designed to target certain population groups - think cartoons on cereal boxes and lolly packets, think health ratings and marketing claims for adults worried about their health. And with all the confusing nutrition info out there it can be super tricky working out what is best to buy and what isn't.
We need to be aware of how the supermarket is designed and how companies market their products, so we can read the labels and not buy into their BS!!!
Everything in a supermarket is designed for you to buy more.
There are no windows or clocks, so you can lose time in the supermarket. The longer you spend in a shop, the more your bank balance reduces. You have to weave in and out of aisles to get what you want, or travel the length of the supermarket for the basics (fruit and veges at one end, meat, milk and bread at the other).
Product placement is big business. Packets at eye level, especially kids eye level, will sell more. As do those at the end of the aisles. And companies will pay big moolah to have their products in the optimum position.
Promotions like BOGOF's (buy one get one free's) will increase sales hugely and we're not just talking a couple of dollars. Lollies and drinks at the checkout are designed to impulse you and get your children to nag you at the end of an exhausting shop for treats - there's even a marketing term for this: it's called "pester power". And it makes companies millions.
One day I was in the supermarket with Miss 10...
"look mum, that sign says health food, but all there are is chips and biscuits. That's not healthy! They're just trying to get us to buy that stuff by pretending it's healthy, right?“
🤔🤔🤔
Yep!🙄
And that's Step 2 in navigating the supermarket.
The Signage and marketing is there to make you buy. Just because a label says it's organic, gluten free, sugar free, all natural ingredients (etc!) doesn't necessarily mean it's healthier for us than other alternatives.
Step 3 is reading food labels.
Be vary wary of all the front of pack labeling. It's all just marketing! As we all know, food companies main interest is profit, if they say its "all natural" or "no cholesterol" or "low sugar" or "ssh it has vegetables" make sure you read the back to see if it actually does contain veges, or is low sugar or isn't just a vegetable based product that naturally doesn't contain cholesterol!
There are rules around what companies can say though. If they say a product is high fibre (for example) they MUST put fibre on the nutrition information panel (NIP) on the back so you can tell for yourself. BUT they may take a product, for example canola oil, say it is cholesterol free, add cholesterol 0mg on the NIP BUT this is nutrition BS because:
1. cholesterol is only in animal based foods and products like canola oil are naturally cholesterol free
2. cholesterol in the diet has minimal effects on cholesterol levels in the blood.
Take this product for an example. The front of pack promotes it as being a "healthy" biscuit. But is it???
This company is "green washing" their product, by being deliberately misleading.
They are promoting their product as "healthy", when in reality they're not much different from any other biscuit product.
❌ They say on the packet they contain wholegrain oats, but the actual oat content is only 5%. 5% of a 9 gram cookie is 0.45 grams, which is around 3 or 4 single oats per biscuit. Hardly worth raving about.
❌ The packet says it is "sweetened with date puree", which makes you think it doesn't have added sugar in it. But actually, the date content is 3% and the biscuits 3rd ingredient is sugar, the whole biscuit has 4 sources of sugar and the biscuits are 33% sugar or 3/4 of a
teaspoon of sugar, per cookie.
There is no issue with eating biscuits, if you want them, like them, fancy eating them then go for it! But please! don't get sucked into the marketing claims!
And this isn't the only company that does this. I could pick out any product in the supermarket and find something misleading about their labeling. Which is why it is important we learn to read the labels!
Which leads us to the two types of labeling that are on the packets. Front of packet labeling (mostly marketing terms and BS designed to make you buy)
And the back of packet labeling: the Nutrition information panel or NIP and the ingredients list. There are laws in place that require companies to list the ingredients from largest to smallest amounts, put any allergens in bold and if any claims are made about the nutrition of the product, than it needs to be added to the NIP.
1. Read the ingredients list first. Ask yourself:
What are the ingredients? Particularly the top 3 to 4 ingredients as they are the main ones.
Are they wholefood based?
Are they foods you would have in your pantry?
How processed are the ingredients? For example, is it made from potatoes or potato flour or modified potato starch?
How many different types of sugars are in the product?
What types of fats are used - are they healthy wholefood based fats or made from industrial, highly processed oils?
We know that the quality of a food and how much its been processed has more health effects than how much fat, carbs, protein it contains.
Choosing foods that are less processed is more important.
2. When comparing products use the 100 gram section.
There are no rules or laws around serving sizes and companies don't often choose realistic serves. This makes it super hard to compare different products. By using the per 100 gram, you can compare products easily. For example, a muesli bar may only have 1 teaspoon of sugar, but if its small, it may actually be 25% sugar (like the Mother Earth Bars with "vegetables"). You may be better choosing a larger bar with less sugar per 100 gram weight.
3. Check the sugars section: 4 grams of sugar = 1 teaspoon.
Although, its important to note that the sugars section is added sugars AND naturally occurring sugars in fruit and dairy. If you are not sure how much is added, take a look at the ingredients, they are ordered in highest amount first, so if one of the top ingredients is sugar, you know it will be high in added sugars.
That leads us to the Health Star rating.
The Health Star Rating (HSR from here on in due to my laziness) is designed to help consumers identify and buy products that are healthier compared to other similar products.
⭐ The HSR takes into account total energy, total fat and saturated fat, protein, fibre, sugar, salt, fruits and vegetables in a product and uses an algorithm to calculate a Star Rating.
⭐ Presumably, a product with 4 or 5 stars would be good for you.
⭐ But, really, IMO industry has had far too much input into how it works.
For example:
⭐ No product can get 0 stars. The lowest rating a product can get is half a star
⭐ Products like Milo (although this should have changed by now) get a 1.5 star rating for their product because it's 50% sugar, so they calculated it with skim milk and that upped the stars to 4.5 - making Milo seem like a 'healthy' product.
⭐ Products like Nutrigrain, a highly processed nutrient poor cereal have 4 stars and are a whopping 27% sugar. Some high star rated cereals are comparable to biscuits and cakes when it comes to nutrition.
⭐ The HSR is not compulsory! So companies can choose to have in the front of their pack, or not.
⭐ The HSR doesn't take into account whether a food is a whole food, for example:
Frozen fruit only gets 4 stars,
Macadamia nuts 2 stars,
Smoked salmon 1 star!
⭐ I would choose to eat frozen fruit, smoked salmon and macadamia's over nutrigrain and milo any day and their health profiles vary hugely with fruit and nuts being high in fibre, nutrient dense and good for you and milo and nutrigrain not at all good for you.
Because we KNOW that the macro-nutrient (amount of protein, carbs and fats) composition of a food matters less than how much processed foods you are eating.
⭐ If you enjoy Milo, Nutrigrain, biscuits and other similar products (and many people do) than go for it and enjoy those foods "in moderation".
⭐ HSR is complete bullocks. It does not identify foods that are healthy or not and companies manipulate it to their own end. This is basically true of all front of pack labeling.
⭐ Choose wholefoods more and as much as you can, reduce the amount of packaged foods you eat.
⭐ Learn to read labels, check the ingredients list, use the nutrition information panel on the back. You want the ingredients to be mostly whole foods, or foods you would have in your pantry. Try and choose foods with less added salt and sugar and highly processed flours, starches, cereals etc
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