Monday, August 28, 2017

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency Asks For Examples of Deceptive Food Labels

Saw this tweet from the CFIA and so I decided to take a supermarket field trip and found plenty of what I would describe as deceptive food labels.

5 teaspoons of sugar per bar along with 210 calories 
31% more sugar cup per cup than Froot Loops
By weight, this product is 48% sugar
Cookie for cookie more than double the sugar of an Oreo
Drop for drop more sugar and calories than Coca-Cola
With 2.75tsp of sugar per "Twist", contains the sugar of 2.3 actual Twizzlers
Each popsicle contains the sodium found in 93/100ths of one single grain of table salt (along with 2 teaspoons of sugar)

But here's the problem, none of the products' labels above break any Canadian packaging laws, and if the labelling laws themselves explicitly permit deceptive labels, consumers don't stand a chance.

Why have a system where the onus is on the consumer to study the products' nutrition fact panels to determine if their healthy front of package claims are supported?