Can you report false nutrition info?
Lately, I have found several food items that claim to have one thing or another, that from the ingredient list make their reporting info implausible. The first was a salad dressing that claimed 25 cals and 1 g fat, but I poured no less than 1-1/4C pure oil off the top of a 16oz bottle. Yes, I am checking the serving sizes. From their math there should have been no more than 500 cals in the whole bottle, but there are almost 2000 in a cup of oil.
Today I am reading the little label on a bag of tangelos I picked up at the grocery store. 7g of fiber per tangelo. Really? Seems really high for a small piece of citrus fruit. I've done some internet research and it's more like 2-4, but come on. Not that I trust the FDA for much, but what's the point of labeling if it's not accurate? I have gotten attached to reading my labels, dammit.
Anybody know if you can report stuff like this or if it even matters? Am I just overreacting? Your thoughts?
maybe they're counting the fiber in the orange peel too...
Good to know I am not the only paranoid food person here
The FDA is notorious for lying to the public.
The US thinks we have the greatest food in the world which is BS
Maybe I am wrong??
Labels make people happy.
I don't think you can report it with success.
The way to reach the public is by education. Most people will think you are imbecilic but oh well.
Truth hurts
All My Opinions
Maybe you can report things of this nature to the FDA? Or the USDA? There was just a story in the news about Applebee's underreportingfat and calories--I wonder who that was reaported too...I'll go check...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28586980/
Hmm..the story didn't mention who they contacted to report the inaccuracies...
I think it would be lovely if you could report it to someone, but look who you'd be reporting it to, as has been suggested (FDA, USDA)...
I don't think you'll get anywhere with that, as they are likely the ones who are falsely reporting it in the first place, or being paid to look the other way, or not doing their jobs sufficiently to catch the discrepancies.
Good eye, ND. I don't even read things that closely. Now I'm sort of afraid to... I might not like what I find!
I've found that this happens a lot on products found in asian food markets. I mean, there are different regulations, I guess, but it's just outrageous with some of the things I've seen. Sometimes grams of protein go through the roof while fat is zero. ummm, right....
So now I have to distrust u.s. nutrition too?
rats.
not vegan
When you are talking about imported foods that is a whole different ballpark.
Scary territory there
When you are talking about imported foods that is a whole different ballpark.
Scary territory there
*stubbornly clutching vegan narutomaki*
Just try weighing that "5 pound" bag of potatoes on your scale at home. Would you believe--3 and a half? "Or so"?
Just try weighing that "5 pound" bag of potatoes on your scale at home. Would you believe--3 and a half? "Or so"?
Haha! My mom once did something like this. Out of curiosity, she took one of those 1-lb. boxes of sugar to the produce section to weigh it - less than 12 oz. In fact, many of them were. She wrote a letter to the company, and they sent out a dude (yes!) with tons of free sugar for her. They were bribing her!
I've had issues with inaccurate ingredient labels of imported food (I never usually check out nutrition info, unless something looks vegan and then mysteriously has cholesterol in it). I used to shop at a big Korean market where my boyfriend used to live, and the ingredient labels for some things changed all the time; there were these CUTE cookies that one week were totally vegan, next week with 3 non-vegan ingredients (like milk, eggs, butter). Or I still have this problem with pre-made konbu dashi - some labels say it has lactose (dairy derived), some make no mention of it, especially the larger packaged. Some items have really simple ingredients but have an allergen-type label that indicates it has all sorts of stuff - like a bottle of soy sauce will say it contains "water, soybeans, wheat, salt" but then say "contains fish, milk, eggs" (?). I think they probably mean "processed in a facility with fish, milk, and eggs" like on some U.S. food labels...
Thanks for the input. I'm glad to know I'm not totally crazy, at least as far as this goes.
I noticed the dressing issue a while ago and it was a small, not nationally distributed "brand." I think it was a gift from someone and I want to say it was an Italian Restaurant brand, or something like that. In any case, I didn't fret too much over it, mostly b/c it was a small business type of thing and I tend to be more forgiving of mistakes from that kind of source. If it had been Kraft or something like that, I'd have thrown a bigger fit. These tangelos are grown in Florida so I'm going to write the distributor and ask how they derived their numbers (I'll ask abut the peel, ppc. Mostly to bring it to their attention. If that's the thought behind it, I'll report them to somebody or everybody). I'll post if they reply. I don't have the bottle from the dressing anymore, but I'll start keeping a closer eye on my labels.
The only reason I noticed these two was because they seemed extraordinarily wrong. I'm not gonna stop reading labels. I'm just pissed that we've evolved into such a "buyer-beware" type of society.
I have also noticed that with imported packaged foods occasionally. Not that I'm saying the FDA doesn't probably have a million mis-labeled products too, but it's more noticable (to me) on labels that have obvious flaws, like misspelt ingredients- as sometimes happens with imported foods. In fact, just yesterday I was at the grocery store looking for an expiration date on a bottle of pickled ginger (I have some old ginger in my fridge, and I just wanted to kind of gauge how long a jar of it typically lasts for) and noticed that there was a mysterious sharpied-out ingredient listed. On all of the bottles, too. ??? I thought that was a tad odd.