It is not always easy to understand food labels. To do this, it is necessary to have some notions about a nomenclature that is often convoluted for consumers, who are alarmed for no reason on many occasions. A survey carried out by the Organization of Consumers and Users (OCU) reveals that 44% of consumers usually pay close attention to the label, while 47% claim to only look at it from above and 9% never read it. The main reason for this lack of interest is the font size, too small for most users. The difficulties with the size of the letter increase in those over 60 years of age and it is a problem for more than 70% of those surveyed in this age group.
Among the main claims for consumers are, in this order: no added sugars, low saturated fat content, low calories, low salt content and no artificial additives. On the other hand, the main information that consumers consult on the labels is, also in order: expiration date or best before consumption (however, the majority of respondents do not know the difference between the two concepts well), list of ingredients, table of nutritional information, place of origin or provenance and instructions for use/cooking. The OCU also points out that 44% of people over 60 declare that it is difficult for them to understand the labeling and only 24% find it easy.
This complexity translates into a series of reluctance on the part of some consumers that are often unjustified. Rafael Bailón Moreno, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Granada, who also teaches classes in Food Science and Technology, explains it: "Many people are afraid of the composition of food when they come across names incomprehensible a priori, as is the case with E- numbers, for example. They are unfounded fears, since each and every one of the ingredients that appear in the lists are completely safe and although sometimes the labels seem a difficult tangle to understand, all the food additives are tested by the European Union so that they are, without any there is no doubt, insurance in the amounts allowed”, explains the expert.
The dietitian-nutritionist and food technologist Beatriz Robles agrees with him, who recalls that "additives are safe, since for one of them to appear on the list of those accepted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) there must be behind a solid scientific evidence that in no case can lead to error: the lists are super fine-tuned ”. For Robles, "the bad thing about some products with endless lists of ingredients, as is the case with many ultra-processed products, is not the additives, but their nutritional profile, since they usually contain refined flours, sugars, unhealthy unhealthy fats, salt and other ingredients combined to make an irresistible and unhealthy concoction.”
Bailón Moreno recalls, for his part, that the health authorities spin so finely "that they even prohibit some additives in combination with others, that is to say that a single additive can be added in certain quantities to a specific food but in much smaller quantities in another type of products". The expert affirms, however, that "being afraid of the unknown is human" and advocates expanding and improving campaigns to inform the bulk of the population about labeling. "Given that part of the industry may have a certain interest in the fact that the information is not clear, in selling certain motorcycles, the mission of the authorities should be to try to make all this information as transparent as possible for the consumer," explains the professor of the University of Grenada. These are some of the aspects to take into account:
The first thing to know is that in a list of ingredients, these are always ordered from most to least. In other words, the first ingredient that appears on the list is the one that appears in the greatest amount in the product, while the next one will be the second with the most presence and at the end of the list will appear those that are included to a lesser extent, sometimes tiny. This is already a good indicator of what we are going to find and, in the words of Bailón Moreno, "a good way of knowing if what the package says is true or false." The expert recalls that on many occasions "some packages announce the presence of a certain ingredient in a very striking way and then when looking at the list we realize that it is the last one, which means that its presence is very small."
A good example of this trend is, according to Bailón Moreno, a product that he recently found in the supermarket. "The package sold that it was sweetened with stevia, in very large letters, but when the truth came, when looking at the label, you could see that the main ingredient was sucralose (another powerful sweetener) and that it only contained 8% of stevia”. This occurs because, in the case of sweeteners, the nomenclature matters: "Terms like saccharin or stevia have a relatively good reputation compared to other sweeteners, so many companies add a small percentage of these just to be able to advertise them on their packages, although their presence is less”, explains Bailón Moreno.
On the other hand, the names ending in the suffix "ose" (glucose, dextrose, sucrose, lactose...) are added monosaccharides and disaccharides, that is, "a way of naming free sugars, which are those that we should eliminate from the diet ”, explains, for his part, Robles. Other sources of these sugars are syrups and syrups, "which have a certain unjustified good reputation, because even though they have a different origin they have the same effect on the body."
E- numbers are one of the great sources of confusion when it comes to interpreting labels, since there are many consumers who directly label them as harmful, in many cases arguing that they are artificial additives. Neither of these things is true. “To begin with, whether something is good or bad does not depend on whether it is natural or artificial,” says Bailón Moreno. There are harmful natural substances, from snake venom to cyanide or carbon monoxide, and other artificial ones that are not. Substances are not toxic or not depending on their nature”, underlines the professor.
In the case of E- numbers, “they are substances that have been studied in depth, individually, by the European Union. If they have been put on the market, it is because they have passed exhaustive controls and have solid scientific support”. Among these E- that so tense a large part of consumers, we find some that are natural and others artificial, but all of them "have been designed to protect the consumer's health, not to harm it." Thus, E-101 is riboflavin, which is nothing more than a vitamin, while E-160d is lycopene, a natural dye present in many yellow and red plants and fruits. Another example is E-306, an additive from the family of antioxidants that is very common in nature, present in vegetable oils such as soybean or sunflower.
It is common for convoluted names to generate greater reluctance in consumers. A good example is ascorbic acid, which takes on different connotations depending on how it is called. “Ascorbic acid is nothing more than the vitamin C present, for example, in lemon juice. A study was carried out with a group of cooking students that revealed that when you spoke of ascorbic acid it was received with reservations, while if you said vitamin C the perception was positive and if you said lemon juice the reception was neutral”, explains Bailón Moreno. .
Often the differences between ingredients and additives are so subtle that even well-informed consumers have difficulty distinguishing between them. “The additive is something that is added to the original product to preserve it or provide a certain flavor, color, texture or properties. If the product did not have this additive, it would remain essentially the same. On the contrary, the ingredient is part of the very idiosyncrasy of the food, and if it did not have it, it would stop being what it is”.
This means that some substances can function as an ingredient or as an additive in different products. It is the case of salt. “It is possible to add sodium chloride to certain foods to enhance their flavor, so that it works as an additive, but there are others in which salt is its own ingredient, such as chorizo and other sausages. In them, the salt works as an ingredient, since it decreases the water content and makes the original meat dry out, which gives rise to the sausage as such”, he points out. This can cause confusion, since "we can interpret that a sausage that is sold as free of additives does not contain salt. It is not true: it contains large amounts of salt, but as an ingredient, not as an additive”, explains the professor.
It is not the only example. Bailón Moreno explains the case of a milk that is marketed as free of additives and E- numbers. “There is evil there, since in the first place it is not necessary to add additives to the milk and here it is hinted that other brands have them. In addition, it is implied that E- numbers are dangerous, when precisely they are there to protect health.
First of all, the fact that a product is advertised as free of palm oil does not necessarily mean that it is healthy, since it may contain other equally undesirable fats, as well as large amounts of sugar, salt or refined flour. Given the bad reputation garnered by this type of fat, we usually find it on labels as palm kernel oil, palmolein, palm butter or sodium palmitante. On other occasions, it may appear on the labels under the generic name of "vegetable fat (palm)".
