January 12, 2010 Why Nobody Needs Nutrition Labels
Even though parents talk a lot about the importance of good nutrition, recent research suggests that what matters most to shoppers is
- Saving money
- Saving time
- Accommodating our kids’ taste preferences
Want to get through the grocery store quickly – and with the most nutritious food you can buy? Here’s a radical idea: Forget about reading nutrition labels. Why?
First of all, nutrition labels can be a waste of time.
Nutrition labels unnecessarily complicate your shopping experience. If you are going to use them properly, you have to sift through a ton of information, remember what to look for, and compare the nutrition labels across all similar products. Only then can you pick the best food for your family.
Maybe that’s why most people don’t read them anyway. And those of us who do read them, don’t consider the full range of information. Instead we tend to track only certain nutrients, such as sugar or fat. But this strategy can be misleading: lots of low fat foods, for example, are extremely high in sugar and lots of reduced sugar items have limited amounts of fiber.
Second, nutrition labels can lead you astray.
Finding the best nutrition label on your kids’ favorite foods – macaroni and cheese for instance – gives you a false sense of security because even the best box is probably not that good for you.
Nutrition labels are only useful for choosing foods when it comes to buying processed foods and processed foods are almost always less-than-optimal. After all, it’s not like you need a nutrition label to assess the quality of the broccoli you buy.
Third, nutrition labels can wreck your kids’ eating habits.
Eating lots of processed foods – the only items in the grocery store that you can’t automatically know how healthy they are just by looking at them – pulls your kids’ taste buds away from the fresh fruits and vegetables you want them to eat and moves them towards the junky stuff you’re trying to get them to avoid.
So, give yourself a break, and shop in a way that makes the labels unnecessary.
Adopt a strategy of buying mostly unprocessed foods and then it won’t really matter whether you buy slightly (or extremely) inferior processed foods. They won’t be a significant part of your kids’ diet. And the added bonus? Your kids will learn to eat their veggies. It’s kind of like having your cake and eating it too.
~ Changing the conversation from nutrition to habits. ~
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Sources: Maubach, N., J. Hoek, and T. McCreanor. 2009. "An Exploration of Parents' Food Purchasing Behaviors." Appetite 53:297-302; Feunekes, G. I. J., I. A. Gortemaker, A. A. Willems, R. Lion, and M. van den Kommer. 2008. "Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling: Testing, Effectiveness of Different Nutrition Labelling Formats Front-of-Pack in Four European Countries." Appetite 50: 57-70.
Reader Comments (3)
Hi Dina,
Great post. As a father of three young children charged with the food shopping in our family, I definitely identify with what you wrote about waste of time. In an ideal world, we would all buy unprocessed foods and prepare them ourselves.
But unprocessed foods account for only about 5% of what supermarkets sell. The rest comes in boxes with nutrition facts and ingredient labels. Do we ignore all that?
Let's take a look at the cereal aisle, often boasting more than 100 choices. Everybody eats some form of cereal.
Now, if a parent chooses to ignore nutrition information, he or she will choose a kiddie option oft laden with sugar and artificial colors.
But spending a minute or two to look for a cereal with less sugar and more fiber can yield a great nutritional improvement. Why not take a shot?
Hemi,
Thanks for your comment. I bet shopping is quite an experience for you with 3 young children! Maybe you should consider ignoring most of what is in the grocery store -- it will save you a lot of time! It will also "save" you from inferior foods. Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to buy it. Most nutritionists recommend you shop from the perimeter anyway because that's where the fresh, whole foods are.
As for cereal, I agree that you can't just ignore the cereal aisle. But here are two things to consider:
1) If you mix-up what you give your kids for breakfast with cereal only making an appearance every couple of days, you don't have to worry so much about the quality of the cereal.
2) A much simpler "test" of cereal quality than reading nutrition labels is this -- if it looks, smells and/or tastes like candy (or cookies) treat it accordingly. Or as Michael Pollen says in his new book Food Rules: Don't eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk (p. 79).
There are simpler and more effective ways to shop nutritionally than to read nutrition labels. In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that something isn't that food for you if you need to read the nutrition label to know how nutritious it is!
Dina
I really like your writing style, its not generic and extremely long and tedious like a lot of blog posts I read, you get to the point and I really enjoy reading your articles! Thanks for sharing..
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