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Labels, Marketing, Nutrition knowledge
kikih64
Posts: 349 Member
So I went grocery shopping today and you know what I found out? Raw white potatoes are gluten-free! Who knew?
Seriously though, I can see putting the gluten-free label on things like sauces or soups,etc, but I think that anyone that knows they should be avoiding gluten would know that fresh vegetables are safe.
I've also noticed a lot of "Whole 30 approved" labels too. Having done a Whole30 and having friends who've done it, I know we wouldn't trust that. We'd read the label ourselves.
So not a debate really, but how much value do you put on these marketing tactics when choosing your food? Have you seen other similar labels out there?
Seriously though, I can see putting the gluten-free label on things like sauces or soups,etc, but I think that anyone that knows they should be avoiding gluten would know that fresh vegetables are safe.
I've also noticed a lot of "Whole 30 approved" labels too. Having done a Whole30 and having friends who've done it, I know we wouldn't trust that. We'd read the label ourselves.
So not a debate really, but how much value do you put on these marketing tactics when choosing your food? Have you seen other similar labels out there?
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Replies
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Zero. Zilch. Nada. They're a reason not to buy those products.
That said, years ago, I was pleased to find out that my OJ was fat-free.2 -
Other than the standardized nutrition information and the ingredients I do not pay attention to other stuff on labels which tends to be marketing fluff.2
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The only thing I look for on packaging is calories per serving, (grams). Don't pay attention to anything else.1
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I sort of just eat everything and don't bother looking at labels until I get home. Even then I only care about serving size, calories, and macros.2
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The only one I bother acknowledging is No Salt Added. To me, everything else, other than the nutrition label, are just pointless wastes of ink.1
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I have my *kitten* goggles on when I shop. Sometimes I have to choose an item with a cringeworthy blurb and it sucks, but it can still be a good product.1
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I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!4 -
VintageFeline wrote: »I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!
My favorite one is the milk with the label: "contains lactose"... That one cracks me up nearly every time (someone who's lactose intolerant will hopefully know that regular milk is shock full of the stuff...)
I tend to only check the nutrition facts. Then again, I tend to always buy the same things and avoid any of the foods with the pretty stickers (those tend to be far more expansive the the ones hidden all the way at the bottom of the shelf...)1 -
VintageFeline wrote: »I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!
I laugh at that type of stuff, then realize it's there because someone who was allergic/sensitive ate it and demanded the company put a warning label on it.
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This is the danger of the check box mentality and people lacking any sort of common sense.
I run regulatory compliance for a company and the most common questions we get are related to allergen content. The number one question asked in the last quarter (these are from medical professionals with a combined 18 years of education):
Q: Does your IV sodium chloride contain gluten?
A: No - salt and water do not contain gluten.6 -
Wow. Just. Wow.0
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VintageFeline wrote: »I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!
Except peanuts aren't nuts at all. Damned naming weirdness; kinda like how blackberries, raspberries and strawberries aren't berries.0 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!
Except peanuts aren't nuts at all. Damned naming weirdness; kinda like how blackberries, raspberries and strawberries aren't berries.
And tomatoes aren't vegetables.0 -
Celiac here chiming in on the sometimes silly, sometimes helpful "gluten free" thing.
Gluten shows up in the oddest places. There used to be paper plates that had gluten in the coating on them, and if you weren't in the know, you needed to worry about them.
People like me who were diagnosed back in the dark ages and learned to be afraid of things like licking envelopes for fear of gluten (yes, this was a problem) are pretty paranoid about it.
This doesn't even get into the issue of items produced on shared equipment.
You might think I'd be able to safely pick up a bag of lentils and toss it into my grocery cart, but ... NOPE. Some are processed with wheat and might be contaminated and I need to be careful. Same with any beans.
So yeah, I appreciate gluten free labels on items that are ... well, DUH! of course this is gluten free!... to the rest of you.
To someone like me, the grocery store is a minefield. I used to have to go armed with a list of safe products that was constantly changing and now it's a lot easier. I still need to read labels like a hawk, but this whole "gluten free" trend isn't quite as silly as it seems on the face of it.
Now, if the rest of you want to laugh at the bag of flour in my pantry that is labeled "vegan" and "lactose free"? Have at it. I'm still scratching my head over that one.9 -
Vegetable is a purely culinary term (except in uncommon, mostly deprecated use to refer to something from any plant, e.g. "vegetable matter"), so being a botanical fruit does not mean it cannot be a vegetable. Unlike fruit, nut, or berry, it does not have a culinary and botanical definition.VintageFeline wrote: »Gallowmere1984 wrote: »VintageFeline wrote: »I do chuckle at bags of peanuts having "may contain nuts" or something like wholewheat bread with "may contain wheat". Like no *kitten* Sherlock. I mean, if you're stupid enough to not realise you shouldn't eat peanuts with a peanut allergy then, well, natural selection.........
Personally I don't pay any attention at all. I'll check calories on things I buy rarely/never before to decide if that's what I want to use my calories on but otherwise, everything is fair game!
Except peanuts aren't nuts at all. Damned naming weirdness; kinda like how blackberries, raspberries and strawberries aren't berries.
And tomatoes aren't vegetables.1 -
Animal products show up in unexpected places as additives or used in the processing, like bone char used in the processing of white sugar, so I can get why that may be a thing.GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Now, if the rest of you want to laugh at the bag of flour in my pantry that is labeled "vegan" and "lactose free"? Have at it. I'm still scratching my head over that one.1 -
I once found a bottle of dairy milk bearing the warning, "may contain milk".
Really? Well, I never...
The packaging has since been changed to, "contains milk", but the memory keeps me warm on cold nights.
I would think they're worried about cross-contamination in processing from other pharmaceutical products made by the same manufacturer, and the solution not being pure salt and water?This is the danger of the check box mentality and people lacking any sort of common sense.
I run regulatory compliance for a company and the most common questions we get are related to allergen content. The number one question asked in the last quarter (these are from medical professionals with a combined 18 years of education):
Q: Does your IV sodium chloride contain gluten?
A: No - salt and water do not contain gluten.
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Celiac here chiming in on the sometimes silly, sometimes helpful "gluten free" thing.
Gluten shows up in the oddest places. There used to be paper plates that had gluten in the coating on them, and if you weren't in the know, you needed to worry about them.
People like me who were diagnosed back in the dark ages and learned to be afraid of things like licking envelopes for fear of gluten (yes, this was a problem) are pretty paranoid about it.
This doesn't even get into the issue of items produced on shared equipment.
You might think I'd be able to safely pick up a bag of lentils and toss it into my grocery cart, but ... NOPE. Some are processed with wheat and might be contaminated and I need to be careful. Same with any beans.
So yeah, I appreciate gluten free labels on items that are ... well, DUH! of course this is gluten free!... to the rest of you.
To someone like me, the grocery store is a minefield. I used to have to go armed with a list of safe products that was constantly changing and now it's a lot easier. I still need to read labels like a hawk, but this whole "gluten free" trend isn't quite as silly as it seems on the face of it.
Now, if the rest of you want to laugh at the bag of flour in my pantry that is labeled "vegan" and "lactose free"? Have at it. I'm still scratching my head over that one.
This I don't think is silly because those are the not obvious things. Like eateries that claim to serve gluten free but use the same equipment as the regular menu to make it, not understanding that that's not good enough due to cross contamination.
It's the "this is peanuts!" thing on peanuts et al I find silly.1 -
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The_Enginerd wrote: »
Animal products show up in unexpected places as additives or used in the processing, like bone char used in the processing of white sugar, so I can get why that may be a thing.GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Now, if the rest of you want to laugh at the bag of flour in my pantry that is labeled "vegan" and "lactose free"? Have at it. I'm still scratching my head over that one.
Yeah, I had thought of the processing of sugar, but I wasn't aware of anything involved in the processing of wheat. The lactose is the one that really got me wondering. Hopefully someone stumbles across this who could shed some light on the label on Wegmans flour.0 -
When my daughter was a baby, she had MSPI, so I was in the habit of reading all the labels. It was a really difficult few years because nearly everything contains some form of milk, soy, or protein. I had to learn all of the different names they could be labeled as. I eventually got the hang of it, and she eventually grew out of it, for the most part. She still tends to have flare ups in the form of IBS type symptoms from dairy products, so that is what I look for most when reading labels. I also tend to look for lower sodium products, simply because I like the taste better.0
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I'm like GottaBurnEmAll, the grocery store is a minefield. I'm not a celiac, thank goodness, but I do have MCS. So there is a long list of additives, preservatives, bleaching agents, and dyes I cannot ingest safely. So I have to read labels very carefully. Some foods I don't even know what in them causes a reaction...for example Frosted Mini Wheats give me a horrible blistering rash on the insides of my arms...no idea what in them causes it. My little brother is allergic to corn, so I also appreciate the labels for that reason as well as you can find corn starch in things like baking powder or grated cheese. My MCS is also why I don't eat fast food ever...the chances of puking my guts out, fainting and rashes were 100% on my teen attempts to be "normal" by hitting KFC, McDonalds, etc with my friends.
The sad thing is that many restaurants are getting fast foodish....I was on a road trip from Ohio to Florida a few years ago and thought, hey Cracker Barrel should be ok. Nope...I was puking like some weird vomit fountain and turned red like I'd been sunburned badly. It wasn't food poisoning as my travel companion had split the dish with me and was fine. The same thing happened at Chilis. Made me very sad to think restaurants are now hit or miss.0 -
So I went grocery shopping today and you know what I found out? Raw white potatoes are gluten-free! Who knew?
Seriously though, I can see putting the gluten-free label on things like sauces or soups,etc, but I think that anyone that knows they should be avoiding gluten would know that fresh vegetables are safe.
I've also noticed a lot of "Whole 30 approved" labels too. Having done a Whole30 and having friends who've done it, I know we wouldn't trust that. We'd read the label ourselves.
So not a debate really, but how much value do you put on these marketing tactics when choosing your food? Have you seen other similar labels out there?
I have not seen those labels on fresh produce where I live.
It would not make a difference to me as no one in my house is eating gluten free or a special diet.
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I used to think those types of labels were ridiculous and silly. Like, how dumb can people be?!?
Then I had a child who has a food allergy and I had to start reading all the food labels. There are so many foods that have ingredients that surprise me, possibly as an additive or possibly as a cross contamination risk.
Now when I see those "silly" gluten-free labels on a potato or lactose free labels on milk, etc, I am grateful that I don't have to worry about gluten or dairy and sympathetic to those who do.
Side note: "may contain nuts" on a peanut package actually refers to tree nuts, which are different from peanuts. Someone may be allergic to tree nuts, but not peanuts, and vice versa.4 -
I read everything on labels starting with the calories and sodium. The way I look at it is like this... I don't smoke because I would never inhale toxic cancer-causing chemicals into my body. Why on earth would I eat them? If I pick up a product and there's more than just a few ingredients I immediately put it back. The wonderful thing I there are no labels on fruits and vegetables. Gotta love single ingredient foods lol!3
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The ONLY thing I read on labels is CALORIE COUNT per serving.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I never used to, but I have started looking at the ingredients list on a lot of things. I have never had issues with any foods, but I do try to be conscious of what I am eating. It is surprising what are put in to foods, especially things that seem "healthy".1
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I am another who doesn't care what is on the label except basic nutrition and "no salt added".
Personal care products on the other hand . . . I am allergic to formaldehyde and it is extremely common in shampoo, conditioner, lotion, make-up, baby wipes, etc. You won't see it on the label as formaldehyde, but the preservatives companies use instead of parabens release it as they break down. The ingredients lists on these things is much smaller than the ingredients list on food products too so I really have to read carefully. The label proudly says "paraben free!" which is often a tip off for me to avoid it.1 -
Most of that labeling is geared toward undereducated consumers. As long as people remain that way the labeling will continue.
I bought a bag of apples last week, and my husband jokingly pointed out their "gluten free" label.2
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