Remember when 'low fat' meant it was probably healthy?

I was cleaning out my pantry and found a box of cookies from 2012 that proudly says 'low fat' in big letters. The second ingredient is sugar, and a single serving has 15 grams of it. That label tricked a lot of us into thinking we were making a good choice. Does anyone have a current food label that gives off that same misleading vibe?

3 comments

3 Comments

willowg881mo ago

You said the second ingredient is sugar, but that's actually not the worst part. In my experience, the real trick is when they use multiple types of sweetener. You'll see sugar, then brown rice syrup, then cane juice, all in the same list. It splits up the sugar so each one looks lower on the ingredients, but if you added them together it would be first. It gives off that same old low-fat vibe but now it's "made with real fruit" or "gluten free" on something that never had gluten to start with.

the_piper1mo ago

Spot the same trick with salt too, they'll list sea salt, pink salt, and celery salt separately. Honestly feels like they think we can't add.

martin.riley1mo ago

How is "made with real fruit" not the biggest red flag? It means they used a tiny bit of fruit concentrate so they can ignore the truckload of corn syrup. The marketing never changes, they just find new words to print in green.