The world of food labeling and marketing is often an impenetrable forest of terms, numbers, and nutritional facts that turns all of us into detectives …. While ingredients and nutrition are important to look at, that data can at least usually be trusted to be accurate because of Federal regulations. Instead, you should also be questioning food marketing terms that contain vague promises with no legal definition.
The classic example of this is “natural.” This term used to have no legal meaning, and food companies could slap it on anything they wanted to make sound healthy.
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The biggest food labels to look out for are ones that are comparative or subjective, and therefore impossible to strictly define. The most common of these are terms like “low fat,” and “low sugar,” or “light.”
These vague labels unfortunately extend to environmental and ethical concerns as well. The worst offenders are terms like “green,” and “sustainable,” which again have no legal definition when it comes to food labeling.
