Misleading Food Labels

1763 Words4 Pages

More and More people are becoming concerned about what they eat, especially if they consume food products that are manufactured in food industries. However, it is hard to know what exactly you are consuming if food industries provide false nutrition content and mislead consumers by placing false advertisements on the packaging. When a company produces a product that contains misleading label, consumers are not receiving complete information about the food they are eating which could lead to health issues including allergies and problems with diabetes. At this point, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has started increasing regulations for prepared foods, however, only a few years ago they had some vague laws concerning these foods and companies could get away a lot more than they can now. One of the reasons for this was that the FDA was more concerned about the certain effects store bought food had on people and were less concerned about misleading labels on packaging. However, they seem to have become more aware of the fact that a lot of companies are tricking consumers into believing that their product is the best, and the FDA has started to regulate companies that have misleading advertisements. One thing that they did change, back in 1990, was labeling on the variety pack foods. Before this law got passed, some food companies would present one nutrition chart, for multiple types of foods present in the variety pack, which left other foods unlabeled. Nathan Anderson emphasizes that it is very important to a have food label for every food in variety packs. To support his claim he provided the example of his niece who has diabetes and was eating butter popcorn from a popcorn variety tin: the girl did not notice diffe... ... middle of paper ... ...ly look at the false claims made by food industries expand on their already set regulations, making it harder for companies to get around them. However, if the FDA believes that their regulations are as specific as they can get, then there should be at least somebody to educate consumers about food labels and add more detail to nutritional value charts. Because without changing the way how information is provided and educating people, they will not be able to change their diets to improve nations overall health. Works Cited http://www.law.uh.edu/healthlaw/perspectives/2008/(NA)%20labels.pdf http://health.msn.com/health-topics/cholesterol/22-worst-foods-for-trans-fat?page=3 http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/ http://www.forbes.com/2008/07/29/health-labels-food-forbeslife-cx_avd_0729health.html http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/food_labeling_chaos_report.pdf

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