Unmasking the Meaninglessness of Food Labels

UPDATE: This article has been updated to reflect clarifications and corrections noted in the comment section below.

American consumers have a vast array of options when we walk into grocery stores, but much to our confusion we encounter a mind-boggling proliferation of food labels, many of them totally devoid of substance.

Sarah Wiederkehr, Stanford’s Farm Educator spoke at Friday’s Ethics at Noon session on “Hog-Tied: Navigating Consumer Choice and Consumer Right to Know in the Modern American Food System”.

The audience described the American food landscape as “overwhelming, superficial, a jumble and toxic.” Wiederkehr said that the average supermarket offers 50,000 “food” items – five times more than were available in 1975. She called this situation “debilitating rather than liberating to consumers”.

This exponential increase in products on store shelves is the result of the high yields and abundance of cheap food that followed World War II. “For 300 years most people in the United States produced their own food,” Wiederkehr said. In recent years there have been technological advances, greater use of chemicals and machinery, mass produced food and commodity crop production. A huge portion of our farm products is used to feed animals and to manufacture processed food.

The audience was asked to weigh in how they make choices and cited “cost, nutrition labels, familiarity and taste”. One person said he avoids buying food made in China because of concern about toxicity. Another said she likes Trader Joe’s because they offer fewer choices.

Wiederkehr showed how marketing and packaging are influential. The California Milk Advisory Board has been highly successful with their advertising often showing cows in a pasture. However, she said, “most California dairy cows are in confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) systems”. "Their outdoor time is in dense environment with other cows, often on packed dirt lots."

Wiederkehr cited health, environmental impacts, animal cruelty and social impacts as the main categories of concern. With the exception of chocolate and coffee which have fair trade practices, most consumers don't care about the social impacts of their food.

To help us understand the buzzwords on food labels Wiederkehr presented a case study of egg packaging and labeling. As in the dairy industry most of the picturesque scenes on egg cartons can be misleading she said. She called the words “natural,” “farm fresh” and “farm- raised” are meaningless.

There’s nothing special about “cage free” because California Proposition 2 passed in 2008. It will ban battery cages for poultry by 2015. But keeping chickens out of cages leads to chicken fights, which in turn leads to the need for antibiotics and sometimes de-beaking by machines.

“Free range” could mean as little as five minutes per day outside on a cement block. “Actually most chickens are too scared to go outside,” Wiederkehr said. She thinks the best term to indicate animal welfare is “pastured”.

Eco, sustainable, healthy and natural are frequently misused terms. False claims also abound in restaurant menus. For example their use of the term “local” is suspect unless they state specifically where the food was grown.

Even farmer’s markets are not exempt from deceptive practices. An undercover expose of a southern California farmer’s market found that food bought at Costco was being resold.

Wiederkehr explained that the USDA regulates labels on meat, poultry and eggs while the FDA regulates everything else. She claims there are lots of loopholes.

However, in some ways, Wiederkehr finds that consumers have limited choice because the USDA is overly restrictive. Raw dairy and locally grown meat are two examples. You cannot go to a farm and buy locally slaughtered meat. She and her husband live on the Hidden Valley Farm in Los Altos Hills. If they want to slaughter animals they have grown they are required to go to a USDA approved slaughterhouse. The nearest one is in Paso Robles.

Coming soon are new apps for smart phones that will allow consumers to scan a food product’s bar code and find out more details about the product.

Wiederkehr concluded her talk by saying “food is cheap in our country because of the way we have subsidized commodity crops. Americans spend only ten percent of our paychecks on food; that's less than any other country.”

She added "there are many labels that actually do really mean something. Consumers should have a responsibility to know what labels mean and be able to make decisions accordingly."

One student said he tries to find out as much as possible about the food he commonly eats. “If the source is not transparent I won’t buy it,” he said.

Another asked about a petition to demand that Walmart stop selling endangered species of fish. Wiederkehr recommended the documentary film, “End of the Line” and pointed out that the Marine Stewardship Council and the Monterey Bay Aquarium make recommendations about which fish are safe to consume.