Food labeling is under the cross hairs again as a New Zealand case sparked the government watchdog to draft new legislation on the issue. It’s a topic that should hit close to home — product claims are not what they seem.
Digital Journal — Today, the makers of Ribena, a popular berry drink, launched an ad campaign apologizing to New Zealand and Australian consumers for misleading them about the vitamin C content in their product. One of the largest food and drug manufacturers in the world, GlaxoSmithKline needed to exert some serious damage control after pleading guilty two months ago for breaching fair trading laws.
And how did the company get nailed? Two Kiwi schoolgirls tested the blackcurrant drink for levels of vitamin C for a science fair project, later concluding that the drink’s claim of containing 7mg of vitamin C per 100ml was false: it contained zero amounts of the vital vitamin.
GlaxoSmithKline was later fined for more than $181,000 and forced to place newspaper advertisements apologizing for the nutrition spin. The company also admitted its marketing campaign may have misled customers when it claimed Ribena had four times the vitamin C of oranges.
The case has incensed the country so deeply the New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) said it would include food labeling rules into the new Domestic Food Review currently being drafted.
NZFSA investigation director Geoff Allen recently said:
Not only must the business meet the requirements, it will also need to prove it has met those requirements during regular audits
And so another company attempts to fool the public by claiming nutritional value where there is not. In fact, this issue may be more impactful than the pet-food recall fiasco: every food product we buy, whether overseas or in our backyard, must come under scrutiny. We can’t believe what companies tell us, no matter how much we want to hear it. That may sound like an obvious theory to some, but nutritional labels were mandated to educate us on the food’s ingredients. Once that comes into question, what can we believe?
Throughout North America, the government is responsible for helping the consumer navigate the murky waters of ingredient information. Health Canada passed regulation in 2005 that requires nutrition labeling on most food items, while also demanding companies update their nutrient content claims.
In the U.S., for years the FDA has mandated nutrition labeling, even dedicated a branch of its agency to enforcing its framework. But all that glitters is not healthy.
As Marion Nestle, former chair of the nutrition department at New York University, discovered, these labeling laws allow packaging to make claims that may not be outright false but are shady at best.
She recently told a Kentucky conference, “We’re learning [nutrition information] from people who want us to buy more.” She cited the example of Sensible Solutions Lunchables for children, which advertise an “excellent source of calcium.” Nestle points out the mini-meal also contains 25 per cent of the daily fat allowance.
Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a General Mills cereal made with whole grain, Nestle said. Sounds healthy but what about the fact it contains only one gram of fiber to offset its 10 grams of sugar and three grams of fat per serving? It’s the half-truth the food industry never talks about, for good reason.
What Nestle and the Ribena case highlight is society’s pressing need to be educated about the nourishment consumed every day. Money, not compassion drives business so it’s up to the public to dig beneath the surface to find the real ingredients behind the label. No one said it would be easy. After all, food manufacturers pride themselves on being tight-lipped about exactly how much of what is dumped into their products.
This issue isn’t going away anytime soon. But if two schoolgirls can expose a company’s lies, it should give us hope that anyone can peek behind the magic curtain of the food industry.
