Real benefits? Or just buzz words? How to make sense of 'healthy' food labels

Food labels: Real benefits or just buzzwords? Do food labels have real benefits or are they just buzzwords? Consumer Reporter Ross McLaughlin investigates.

Food packaging can feature a lot of claims that may make you think the product is good for you, or at least, feel better about buying it. But just because something has a label on it claiming to be natural, organic or low fat, doesn’t necessarily mean it is.

Take the claim “good source of calcium.” An item must contain at least 10 per cent of the recommended daily intake to make the claim. On a cup of yogurt the label would make sense, but it may not make sense when you see it on a cookie.

“When you see it on cookie it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of a sudden that cookie is healthier for you,” explained Trisha Calvo, Consumer Reports health and food editor.

Sometimes the health message is in the product’s name, like Simply Lay’s Sea Salted potato chips, where "Simply" means no artificial flavours or colours. But dig a little deeper and the sodium content is almost identical to that in their Classic chips.

“There’s no difference between sea salt and regular salt nutritionally. You’re still going to be getting the sodium from it and it’s still a potato chip,” said Calvo.

Even if the product does contain real ingredients, the key is how much. Brach's Candy Corn boasts it is “made with real honey,” but take a look at the ingredients list and you’ll see that honey is almost the last ingredient on the list which means there’s very little of it in the product.

The same goes for packaging that tells you what’s not inside. Log Cabin Syrup proclaims “no high fructose corn syrup,” but the three main ingredients are still corn syrup, water and sugar.

Consumer Reports says the only real way to know if a food fits your diet is to flip the box over to see the content that matters: calories, fiber, and sodium.

“Nothing is going to make a candy bar healthy. Nothing is going to make a lollipop healthy. That doesn’t mean that you can’t eat those foods. But just don’t be fooled into thinking that you are doing something good for your body,” said Calvo.