Not everything available in the market named “Healthy” is truly healthy! Awareness and general knowledge about what we buy and eat is equally important as eating healthy balanced meal, or exercising in order to either lose weight or balance hormones.
Market strategists and advertisers owns techniques in order to befool customers, therefore, it is very important to be self-aware, cross-check, and question what you see.
The big manufacturing companies know how to play with the minds of the customers and use the consumer’s insecurities in order to sell their product.
But, what they don’t know is that, “SELF AWARENESS” can contribute a lot.
They sell their products under the shade of some very misleading and confusing words that attracts the unaware consumers, and makes them buy the silly products.
Misleading Words or Terms That are Used by Food Industries:
Reduced or less word.
Less sugar, Less calories, Less fat or Less sodium Etc.
The word mostly goes with unhealthy food items like chips, juices, cookies, popcorn, snacks.
Marketers Highlights the term so that people can’t pay attention to other tons of unhealthy ingredients.
Made from Real fruits and vegetables.
They are never made from whole and fresh fruits and vegetables.
These Products are made with the derivative of fruits & Veggies like powders, concentrated form, purée or extract, sweetened part etc.
It can be just coloring from real fruit powder sometimes.
The amount can be extremely low to give you any health benefits, but befool you.
All natural ingredients.
The word natural never meant “Healthy” or “Fresh”. This is again a misleading term which is used usually for normal ingredients such as refined oils and sugar.
Whole grain : except 100% whole grain ( look at the percentage).
Most products with the label “Whole Grains” either doesn’t contain any of it or contains utmost 1-2 of them.
Superfoods.
Basically foods are categorized as “SUPERFOODS” which contains high proportion of nutrients.
But it is been misinterpreted for glorified, expensive & exotic foods. I would rather suggest to look for nutritional foods like veggies, fruits, nuts, greens, seeds, legumes found in local markets.
Organic.
This word best suits for single ingredients such as pulses or cereals. Pacakged mix foods can’t be organic.
Food with ingredients which are not chemically treated but are packaged as “Organic” may have high sugar, fat or salt in them.
Straight from farm.
Very attractive and befooling term which gains consumer’s attention is not at all justified. Straight from farm never guarantees a product to be fresh, and healthy.
Multigrain.
A product with many grains doesn’t makes it healthy.
Different flours or grains are treated or processed and then mixed to make such products.
Most of the nutrients gets lost in the processing and manufacturing.
Trans fat free.
False labeling are also very common nowadays. If per serving of trans fat in a product is less than 0.5g, only then it can be labelled as trans fat free. It’s a type of fat which is harmful and is used to increase the shelf life of the product. Make sure to look out for the percentage of trans fat in the product you buy.
No sugar added.
Products sometimes claims false contents and befool the customer, No sugar means no addition of any type of sugar in any form. But usually these products may have maltodextrin, sucrose, ,and glucose.
Fruit juices are very usually seen having labels of NO Sugar, but they are concentrated which ultimately increases the amount of natural sugar in it.
Immunity booster products.
“Immunity Booster” is another extremely misleading word that has been prominently used on food product labels especially the last 1-2 years due to the fear of COVID-19. They have made their sales by attracting the consumers that their refined and processed products will boost their immunity, which was again misleading.
Lite olive oil.
Lite word on the labels basically means that the product has very less flavors, taste, and aroma.
Gluten free.
People often misconceive the notion of “Gluten free” with that of a healthy product. Those of you who don’t know, gluten free products are basically for the set of people allergic to the consumption of gluten and suffer from gluten intolerance/ celiac disease. Therefore they are bound to buy “Gluten Free Products”. But the people who are non-allergic to gluten often gets confused with this term and often interpret it as more healthier than other products.
Never let this market fool and misguide you, Stay aware and use your common sense, general knowledge to assess the difference between actually healthy foods that are fresh, local, seasonal produce of fruits and vegetables, milk, etc.
Always try to buy single ingredients food or if buying other combined products, make sure you flip and check the ingredients.
Avoid foods with first 3 ingredients as sugar or syrup or malt.
If you can’t pronounce or recognize the ingredients don’t buy them!
Self awareness and education is a key to survive in today’s world. Be practical and thoughtful enough, when it comes to your grocery.