New research supports using so-called traffic light labeling, in addition to numeric labels, to help consumers make healthier food selections. When both types of labels were combined on food items, consumers' choices were based less on taste than they had been when only numeric labels were used.
food labels
Food fraud is outrageously common. In the UK, horse meat was sold as beef, and in China, rat meat was sold as lamb. Now, Malaysian researchers have detected buffalo meat in "beef" frankfurters.
"Use by" and "sell by" labels are not about food safety, although it's easy to be confused by them. In fact, they're only pointers about when a food's quality might not be at its peak.
How does one get busy college students to make healthy food choices? Is it enough to provide nutrition label information, and where should such information be placed? A new study provides some clues, but from a health awareness standpoint the results are somewhat disappointing.
A British researcher has floated the idea of adding exercise equivalents — for instance, how far to run to burn off the calories in a product — to labels on packaged foods. Supposedly, this it to give a value for average-aged and averaged-sized people, which would help everyone assess their individual need for exercise. However, we doubt it.
Thanks to a really idiotic Vermont law, food companies all over the U.S. are scrambling to make thoroughly useless changes to their labels, specifying whether any GM ingredients are in their products. Providing no scientific merit, the law seems to be designed simply to benefit Vermont. Guess who will pay the higher prices for this nonsense?
Sometimes it's hard to tell what foods are good, bad or just OK when it comes to health. One might expect labels of the front of packages to help out and they should but sometimes they're more misleading than helpful.
Taco Bell will join other fast food companies in the movement towards cage-free eggs, but what does this label really mean?
This week s U.S. News & World Report features an article by Health and Science Writer K. Aleisha Fetters entitled, Are Health Foods Making You Fat?--experts share how healthy foods can derail your diet.
The intentionally misleading title attracts attention, but of course her intent is to warn her readers not to be bamboozled by health claims prominently displayed on food labels, which upon closer inspection turn out not to be so conducive to a healthy diet as it seemed.