Is it good for you: Nutrition facts or nutrition fiction?
Seeing the vibrantly packaged snacks and treats while perusing the aisles of the grocery store can be an edacious experience and a stimulating walk down memory lane. Yet some of the indulgent pantry staples and nostalgic treats don’t sound quite as delectable when you turn the box over and squint to read the words and numbers in the printed black and white box. The guilt of indulgence doesn’t linger as there is good news: there’s a low-fat version to opt for instead, as a healthier choice. This reflexive decision may feel like the healthy route, but the reality is that the firms and marketers that produce and sell these processed products have anticipated consumers having this exact internal debate. Theoretically, added nutrition information on external packaging should signal to consumers the true nutritional values of an item in addition to the actual listed “Nutrition Facts.” However, for most products, this added messaging is instead being leveraged as a marketing tactic. These intrusive claims are not displayed with the intention of accurately informing consumers but instead serve to manipulate the general public’s perception of what they can and should consider to be “healthy” consumption decisions. In the U.S., this plays out in the cultural acceptance of a “typical” diet heavily consisting of processed and poor quality food (from both grocery stores and fast food chains) (L. Raune & D Raune 220) and a flourishing “wellness” and hyper-health focused diet industry that often comes at high premiums. It is through this kind of marketing that corporations manipulate the public perception of “healthy” and “healthier” food options in a way that actually promotes unhealthy eating habits and deprives people of knowing the true nutritional value of the foods they eat and products that they use.
Fast food chains are a major sector through which corporations divest consumers of proper nutritional information as well as fail to generally offer nutritious high quality products. Despite increased public awareness of the low nutritional value of fast food products, over the decades since its creation, the industry has seen increasing growth with a market share today of almost 350 billion (IBIS Worldwide). Additionally, fast food and fast food chains are institutions that have become ingrained and normalized within the global culture of food that exists today. Adherence to these low quality food options is perpetuated further by poor or a complete lack-of presented information of the nutritional content itself. Fast food and fast food chains deliberately avoid any nutrition references or health-related claims, while simultaneously failing to offer a broad enough offering for choices to be made on the basis seeking a healthier option. This lack of transparency paired with the high accessibility of fast food establishments has unequal repercussions on different consumer groups, most notably with the reverberating effects of fast-food pervasion in metropolitan areas detrimentally and disproportionately affecting lower-income consumers. Although there has been wider spread public knowledge as to the nutrient-deficient nature of fast food products, this information often falls short of spreading to the areas where fast food chains are the most prevalent. These are often communities in which individuals may not have the flexibility to make informed decisions and seek out healthier and/or more expensive options. Fast food chains utilize these aspects of the consumer market to capitalize on these groups with little incentive to properly educate consumers or increase product quality (Freeman 2222). Instead, in the market for fast food, firms aim to create product differentiation through attributes such as the taste, aroma, and appearance of food at the lowest price (Richards et al. 429), not by offering a higher quality, more nutritious product. By deliberately failing to provide nutritional information, individuals are stripped of their rights to know exactly what they are putting into their bodies and effectively make nourishment and sustenance a luxury good.
Our perception of food is often dictated by the experiences that we have with a firm’s marketing and advertising conjoint with an individual understanding of what’s good and bad for us. A large historical example of how marketing campaigns have manipulated and capitalized on the public perception of “healthy” food was through the inception of lower fat food options. During the late 1970s and early 80s, the government advised Americans to cut down on the amount of fat in their diets in order to lower their risk of developing cardiovascular diseases (La Berge 141). The effect of this messaging was the typical American’s diet shifting from one where a majority of daily calories came from fat to majority carbohydrates, with an overall minimal change to total caloric intake. The food industry capitalized on this message and low-fat products and lower-fat versions of existing products were a new category that emerged on grocery shelves and rapidly gained market share in the U.S. (Geyskens 118). There was now a supply and demand for low fat food options and an ensuing surge in products advertised as being such with little evidence of being legitimately more nutritious. Today, despite extensive research, it still remains debatable as to if consuming less saturated fat actually lowers the risk of disease in healthy non-obese individuals. In fact, low-fat diets have been found to lead to other problems such as over-consumption and potential contribution to rising obesity rates (Wilson Quarterly 94). Adhering to a lower-fat diet can theoretically lead to lower caloric intake and resulting weight-loss, yet in practice, the reality of food labels plays out differently for consumers. It is often to the opposite effect of attempts to be “healthier.” What occurs as the result of “less of X” nutrition labeling is instead a skewed perception of appropriate serving size, leading to over consumption, and eventually a risk of obesity (Wansink 606). Being advised to lower dietary fat intake has seemingly done very little to improve people’s health. Since Americans started attempting to rid their diets of fat in the 70s and 80s, obesity and death from obesity-related diseases has only increased. From 2000 up until 2017 alone, obesity prevalence increased from 30.4% to 41.9% (CDC). Initial information provided (like on a label) as well as a consumer’s own inferences on the nutritional value or lack thereof, influences the deemed appropriate consumption choice, and the nutrition messaging by corporations manipulate both. Foods containing “less” of something “bad” for us should signify a healthier decision, yet low-fat diets are promoted by marketing messages as a result of the food industry spending billions of dollars pushing ideas like the anti-fat message.
Consumer and societal perception of nutrition is shaped primarily by the branding and way in which we interact and understand (or don’t) the biological effects of our food choices. A new distinction between a “regular” and “healthier” version of products also manifests in the conception of a new “health” food industry. One of the largest spaces that this food category exists in are high-end grocery retailers like Whole Foods. Opposite from fast food chains on the price spectrum, retailers like Whole Foods are where consumers don’t have to screen items to be able to pick the “better” or most nutritious option, instead the product mix is already sorted, an effort reflected in the often inflated pricing. While larger name brands and fast food chains may seek to entice consumers with singular emphasized nutritional value categories (such as an advertised lower fat content in products), the branding of items in higher-end grocery stores often follows a different approach. By presenting a barrage of information and ingredients with supposed health benefits, firms aim to convince consumers that they have a deficiency and therefore a need for the product in their diets in order to provide a perceived health benefit. A major effect of this is seen in the genesis of “superfoods.” Superfoods are an unofficial dietary category of food that is unrigid in criteria but are often plant-based “natural foods that are especially nutrient-dense while generally being low in calories.” (Cleveland Clinic). Examples of foods that have been deemed as superfoods include avocados, berries, beets, and chia seeds. Foods with the title often are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals by nature, but their true value is in the premium that people are willing to pay for them and for products that are advertised to contain them. “When marketing imperatives are at work, sellers want research to claim that their products are “superfoods,” which is really a nutritionally meaningless term. “Superfoods” is an advertising concept.” (The Atlantic). While the health “benefits” and ingredient quality of these products is often more clearly stated, the higher prices of these items are only proportionate to their perceived benefit and exclusive to the target market of affluent consumers who are buying not only the products themselves, but buying into the lifestyle, culture, and perceived sense of “healthy” that is marketed to them.
Other institutions besides corporations and marketing firms are also negligent in manipulating public perception of a healthy diet. In 1990, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the governmental agency that regulates food labels in the U.S., passed the Nutrition Labeling Education Act that mandated food products have external listed nutritional values. The goal was to “eliminate untruthful nutrition claims and to improve consumers’ abilities to access and process nutrition information at the point of sale” (Moorman et al. 717). The problem was that the FDA only considers the relative amount of something in “low” labels, unassociated with the number of calories. For fat content in food, the detrimental effect was consumers incorrectly equating lower fat content to lower caloric value.
There is and should be enough accessible public information and unbiased scientific research available for all consumers to be able to make informed purchase and consumption decisions for themselves. But an ingrained and widely accepted food culture that includes highly processed poor quality foods, a dominant fast food market, and a luxury “health” food industry all led by corporations, deprive people of this ability and right. Without a centralized place to get information, consumption recommendations are dangerously widely sourced, leading to consumers potentially making erroneous assumptions of negative correlations between food attributes and what is good for their “health.” Generalized overarching social messaging spread by the food industry also leaves consumers vulnerable to firms capitalizing on public misinformation as an opportunity to market products with unfounded claims. A lack of governmental oversight and a disregard of the negative effects of these shortcomings disproportionately affect lower income groups and commodify food, something that should be a human right. What remains is a dire need for increased accessibility of regulated and verified consumption information and optionality for implementation for individuals across socioeconomic groups. People should be readily provided with the tools and resources needed in or
