Even if you are technically following the rules when dubbing a product “natural,” you should rethink the cost if that label is actually inaccurate. Not only is this a bad business decision because it alienates the public, but it also can be a waste of your industrial labeling systems if you end up having to print them again anyway.
Researchers from the University of Houston performed a recently-released study about the implications of food labels. The study, called “Truth, Lies, and Packaging: How Food Marketing Creates a False Sense of Health,” looks at the ways that food companies mislead consumers with “healthy” buzzwords.
This includes a variety of different misleading claims, all stemming from words like “antioxidant” and “organic” that appear to have an inherent health value that overrides all of the other negative aspects of a processed food.
An article on this study from the official University of Houston news page quoted the chief researcher, Temple Northup, on what his study shows. Among other things, Northup compared food labels to see the effectiveness of so-called healthy “trigger words.”
“Findings from this research study indicate people aren’t very good at reading nutritional labels even in situations where they are choosing between salmon and Spam,” he said. “Approximately 20 percent picked Spam as the healthier option over salmon.”
It’s understandable that a business would want to promote a new additive or feature of their product. But it needs to do so in a way that doesn’t require re-doing later, and to make sure to have industrial label systems on-hand as a safeguard.
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