Comments

This article definitely speaks for a lot of consumers who have the same confusion. As someone who does grocery shopping on a daily basis, I never really understand what those BIG labels on food products mean, and why exactly am I paying that much more for a “organic” product. For the most part, a lot of these label, nutrition information and

claims are not as useful as it seems. According to Sarah E. Colby’s article Nutrition Marketing on Food Label, people with “higher levels of healthful eating behaviors, self-efficacy, beliefs in diet–disease linkage, and weight loss goals” are more likely to use label than the majority of the consumers who lack the knowledge and skills to correctly interpret food labels (p. 93). To my understandings, the initiative of having more and more food labels and nutrition content claims was to have an information other there available for you to make healthy decisions of what you eat. Yet, food labels has become more like a marketing strategy than what it suppose to be, since the survey Sarah E. Colby conducted suggests that “49% of all products contained nutrition marketing” (p. 94). And the number will only get higher as it dominates the market. We want to have healthy diet, but being manipulated by those food labels is for sure not what I am expecting to see.   

@Mary Lynne Bisone

To follow up on your idea, a research study conducted by Sarah E. Colby has shown that this marketing strategy is actually often used on product marketed toward children than product marketed toward adults, which “Of 9,105 products perceived to be marketed to children, 71% had nutrition marketing” (p. 95). It is a real concern that how are these supposedly healthy products with all the labels affecting us, especially children and pregnant women. How can we ensure that, with that many options opened for us, consumers are able to distinguish which product is the right one for them and not just blindly buying what the companies says on the labels.