When it comes to shopping for food and supplements, one crucial skill is the ability to decipher nutrition labels. Despite ridiculous labeling laws, it’s like the Wild West out there, making it incredibly difficult to understand nutrition labels....
When it comes to shopping for food and supplements, one crucial skill is the ability to decipher nutrition labels. Despite ridiculous labeling laws, it’s like the Wild West out there, making it incredibly difficult to understand nutrition labels.
In today’s episode, I dive into the top 14 marketing claims on product labels that are often meaningless and misleading. Plus, I'll share tips on what you should keep an eye out for when navigating the grocery and supplement aisles.
In this episode:
01:25 - All Natural Label Claims
02:07 - Fat Free or Low Fat Labels
03:34 - Fortified with Vitamins and Minerals
04:37 - Gluten Free
05:33 - Great Source of Vitamins
07:50 - Grass-Fed and Pasture-Raised
10:25 - Heart Healthy
11:18 - No Sugar Added
13:54 - Non-GMO
14:59 - Organic
17:36 - Plant-Based and Vegan
18:54 - Sugar-Free
20:30 - Artificial Sweetener
21:06 - Vegetarian Fed
23:14 - Tips for Healthier Grocery Shopping
Learn more from Michael Kummer:
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Michael Kummer:
Welcome back to the Primer Shift Podcast. In today's episode we're gonna talk about super sum... In today's episode we're gonna talk about something super important and those are nutrition labels because those are the ones that can help you decide whether or not you wanna buy a certain product when you're in the grocery store or not. More specifically we talk about why you shouldn't trust most nutritional labels or product labels in general I should say. And we're gonna talk about... Top 14 misleading claims that you might find on product labels, on nutrition labels, that are confusing, misleading and that might not mean anything at all. And so in this episode we're going to talk about those and I'll share tips with you that you can apply to make better purchasing decisions when you are in the grocery store and when you look at a product and try to figure out is this something I want to put into my body or should I maybe skip it? And with that we're gonna get right to it with the first label or claim that I see on a lot of product and that is all natural. Well, all natural doesn't really mean anything at all because most everything is natural. You know, arsenic, lead, you know, phytoestrogens, E. coli, all of those are natural compounds. And so it doesn't really mean anything at all. Maybe it means there is nothing synthetic in there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the natural ingredients the product has are healthy or good for you. So, you know, all-natural, not a very good thing to go by or a claim to go by if you want to figure out if you want to buy this product. The second one that I see a lot, maybe a little bit less so than in previous years, is fat-free or low-fat. You know, here is the thing. Products or food tastes good either if there is fat or if there is sugar in it. Salt can also play a role of course and that applies to both fatty and products rich in sugars. But generally speaking if a product is fat free or low in fat unless it's naturally low in fat, for example, I don't know maybe a carrot if that's what you care for, it really it often means that the manufacturer removed the fat and replace it with sugar or with some sort of processed carbohydrates and so good example are low-fat yogurts. Well, you know milk is naturally relatively high in fat, good fat that is, and so a low-fat yogurt simply means they added more sugar to make it palatable. You know, not a good thing. You definitely want to go for the high-fat yogurt versus the low-fat yogurt and besides, you know fat, most animal fats are good for you, especially saturated fats, there is nothing wrong with them, it's a myth that they cause cardiovascular disease and clog up your arteries and even dietary cholesterol is there is no issue with that whatsoever and so low fat is actually something, if I see something labeled as low fat, I already know this is something I don't want to buy because I want to buy high fat, I want to get the good stuff and not the high sugar stuff. fortified, you know, if it's fortified with vitamins and minerals and that usually applies to processed foods. Milk too to a degree, but it's you see that a lot on, well on eggs you see it as well, but especially on cereal, breakfast cereals, you see, you know, fortified with thousand minerals. That means a couple of things, you know, if it needs to be fortified, that means that the core ingredients are void of nutrients because why would it has to be a why do we have to fortify it otherwise, right? So that's a radiant indication that you wanna stay away from that product. And usually then the vitamins and minerals that are added are synthetic and absolutely worthless, or not absolutely, but mostly worthless, meaning they are poorly absorbed, they're not very bioavailable and they usually end up in the toilet or cause other types of issues if the body misidentifies them because they look chemically different, they have a chemically different structure. than their natural counterparts. So fortified products just means chunk product with synthetic ingredients or with synthetic minerals, micronutrients that are not going to help you at all. Gluten-free is another good example. I mean if you suffer from celiac disease and you want to, you know, buy something that might even be naturally gluten-free but it was maybe manufactured in a facility where cross-contamination is a possibility, then a gluten-free certification can be helpful. but in most cases for people who do not suffer from celiac disease. Gluten-free simply means that we replaced a, I guess a gluten containing grain, maybe wheat, with something else that's equally bad and just happen to not have gluten. You know, gluten are a type of protein that can cause issues, but some of the other proteins that are not gluten, that you might find in rice maybe or in oats, they can be just as problematic, but very often gluten-free, like crackers and processed foods, they are made with nut flowers and those are highly irritating, so also something. Unless a product is naturally gluten-free, I'd stay away from it. Great source of vitamins, that's another claim that is very misleading because... you know, if something is a great source, there are only a few things that are great sources of vitamins and minerals or micronutrients for that matter. And those are animal based products, in particular, of course, organ meats, but also regular muscle meat and, you know, bone marrow and the fat, the saturated fat of responsibly raised ruminants, great source of vitamins. But processed foods are usually not. great sources of bioavailable and readily absorbable nutrients. There might be great sources of synthetic vitamins, but if the body cannot use them and cannot absorb them properly, it's really meaningless. Often you also see that claim on leafy greens, like if you get a bag of kale or spinach, you know, a great source of vitamin K, a great source of iron, well, or a great source of vitamin A in the... example of maybe carrots or products made with carrots. The problem is those types of vitamins are not the ones that are most compatible with human physiology. You know you probably already know this but there is heme iron and there is non-heme iron. The iron that the that humans can absorb efficiently and use readily is heme iron which is found in animal products or in liver or in spleen but even you know in regular muscle Vitamin K is another example and on the flip side to that is non-heme iron and that's the stuff you find in plants. It's very poorly absorbed and not readily available. So spinach might be a great source of non-heme iron, but the body can only use a small percentage that a piece of steak is a significantly better source of iron that the body can use than a pound of spinach. Same goes with, you know, vitamin K. There's K1 and K2. and there are different varieties, subcategories of K2. And the one you want is found in animal products, not the vitamin K1 in spinach or in, you know, maybe in kale. Same with beta-carotene versus retinol in carrots. You know, so there are different versions of those vitamins. Some of them are not actual vitamins, but precursors to a vitamin, like in the case of beta-carotene. And so if you see great source of vitamins and unless it's on a label of an organ meat or of an animal product, it is probably not what you think it is. Grass-fed, that's a very misleading term that you might find on a lot of animal products. So if you buy grass-fed meat, you know, we all talk about, oh, grass-fed meat is the best meat you can buy. Well, the thing is, every cow, during a certain time of their life, is grass-fed. You cannot raise calves on grain. They would... get sick and die. I mean older cows get sick too but they get slaughtered before they die so you're not gonna notice. But calves, you know, once they are weaned from the mom, they have to eat grass until they get finished on grain before slaughter time. And so grass fat doesn't mean anything because every cattle, every beef that you buy came from a grass fat cow, you know. So absolutely meaningless unless the beef is also grass finished which means during the last few weeks of the cow's life, they didn't get grains, which is the conventional way of finishing beef, but they stayed on grass. So that's a different, and so it's important to look for grass-fed and grass-finished if you really wanna purchase beef from animals that only ate grass or nothing else. But there is also a wrinkle to this. In winter, typically here in the United States, cattle are fat hay if they are grass-fed grass-finished because if nothing's growing they cannot you know eat fresh pasture and So they were getting hay in winter now there they are mate I don't think that exists but technically speaking you could raise a beef cattle on hay Which is arguably less nutritious than fresh pasture and call it grass-fed grass-finished. I don't know that there are cases out there or examples out there where someone would do this because hay is more expensive than you know, just pasture. But technically speaking not even that might meet anything. So that's where the next term that comes into the equation that is pasture raised. Pasture raised by itself doesn't really mean anything because I can have something out on pasture and feed it supplemental feed like pastured chickens for example. You know, there are no chickens in this country that you can buy commercially that don't receive supplemental feed. you know, so they get grain and, you know, depending on the type of feed, that might be negative to the bird's health. So just pasture raised by itself doesn't mean anything, but in the realm of beef at least, if you can find pasture raised, grass fed, grass finished, that's probably a best choice. And the most, the safest bet that you're actually getting what you're thinking you're getting, you know, but otherwise pasture raised or grass fed just by itself might not really mean... much. Number seven healthy ingredients or a variation of that heart healthy. You know that's I think that's I don't know a term maybe that the USDA or the American Heart Association invented a heart healthy but what it basically means is healthy in the eyes of the USDA dietary guidelines. So you know a lot of whole grains and nuts and seeds and very little meat and all of the things you know, you should not be doing at all. So if you see a label heart healthy, or you see the term heart healthy on a product, it usually means it has a lot of fiber and a lot of, you know, whole grains and all kinds of stuff that you absolutely do not want in your diet. So heart healthy, if I see that on a label, I turn around and don't buy the product regardless of what it is. Even if it's something good and a company puts on heart healthy, you know, I typically stay away from that. No sugar added. That's another potentially misleading. I mean, it's always good if a product doesn't have added sugars, you know, no question about that. The problem is that, you know, sometimes you can get away with a product that doesn't require extra sugar, but is still high in sugar. Apple juice or fruit juices in general are a good example. I mean, believe it or not, there are products out there, like an apple juice that has added sugar. I don't know why you would add sugar. to a beverage that's already naturally very, very sweet and that I would have to dilute to drink. But regardless, you know, so there are, you know, if you buy apple juice and it says no added sugar, well, you know, that apple juice, that glass of apple juice might still have significantly more sugar than is good for you. I know that there are some proponents of animal-based eating out there that, you know, put maple syrup or honey into their raw milk because it's not sweet enough for whatever reason. I don't think liquid carbohydrates are incredibly good. They burn very fast and they spike the blood sugar for ultimately no good reason unless, you know, you're physically incredibly active and you need in that particular moment quick carbohydrates to replenish your glycogen stores. You know, then, you know, drinking apple juice or whatever might be a reasonable choice, but for the average Joe, like, you know, you and I... I don't think drinking liquid carbohydrates adds anything to your diet or health for that matter. And so products with no added sugar, be careful. One example that I come across a lot is, because we like it, is jelly. You know, so you can buy, there are few brands of jelly out there that do not contain high fructose corn syrup, which is maybe one of the worst, you know, caloric sweeteners out there. But what they do is they use fruit juices to further sweeten the jelly. Is that better? Potentially. Is it great? Absolutely not. You know, it still adds to the carbohydrate content without necessarily providing any nutrients that you need. I mean, jelly, if you have a raspberry jelly or, you know, whatever that type of jelly might be, it's, I mean, the fruit should already be sweet enough so you don't need to add any extra. So no added sugar. Have to be careful. Sometimes it also means, you know, non-caloric sweeteners were added like sucralose or you know aspartame or ASK or whatever you know all of those things are called that are potentially not good for you. Some of them might be benign, I don't know, but anything synthetic you know that acts like a sweetener but isn't based on the studies I've seen can thoroughly confuse your glucose metabolism again without adding any extra values. So be careful. Non-GMO is another term that is good often when you find it on a label, because if it's not genetically modified, it's definitely better than the alternative. However, non-GMO doesn't necessarily mean that the genetics were not changed by cross-breeding or selection. So, for example, a very good example is if you buy chicken in the store, it's a Cornish cross. Usually I mean I think in 99.99 percent of the cases when you buy a chicken in the store It's a Cornish cross, you know that breed has been modified so much by selection and Cross breeding that it's ultimately an unhealthy bird that would have no chance of survival in nature If it wasn't for us propping it up with you know with food and with very little movement and protecting it from predators because he couldn't even run etc So non-GMO is good, but that does not mean that genes have not been changed by other means, so be careful about that. Organic, it goes hand in hand very often with non-GMO. In fact, when you buy organic, it's implicitly non-GMO because part of the organic certification program, you cannot use GMOs or GMO ingredients. But the other thing with organic is, most people believe, well, if it's organic fruit, that means it's... uh... no chemicals were used and that is not true because there is a list of a lot chemicals that are not necessarily healthy for you either that can be used by farmers as part of their organic uh... practices and we realize that when we started growing uh... you know some of the some produce in our in our garden and we went to the nursery and we got the organic plants and then we look for organic like supplements like you know prevent pests, etc. reduce the occurrence of pests and all kinds of thing that you know pesticides and herbicides that you might be looking for when you do conventional farming or conventionally raising produce or growing produce and they're going to say we have organic options come on here you know and they had like a whole list a whole shelf of organic pesticides and herbicides and you know and you read the label it says you know don't you know Wash your hands, don't inhale and you know like warnings. I'm like, okay if this is organic, you know, but you cannot you know You cannot swallow it. You cannot you know, you have to wash your hands after you cannot get it into your eyes Is this really good? I mean there are still chemicals there might be better Less toxic maybe than the conventional counterparts, but it doesn't mean organically grown produce is free of chemicals You know, so that's not what it means. And the other thing is that a lot of organic produce, especially on the berry side, like raspberries and strawberries, they are grown in hydropons, you know, they are grown in water, they are not grown in soil, you know, that plant or that fruit that, or the plant that the fruit grew on never touched soil. And so you could argue from a nutritional perspective, if there was no soil involved, it's likely significantly less nutritious than a counterpart that was grown in soil. And so that's also something that you see sometimes with organic produce. You know, I have to be careful about that because you might end up buying produce that has fewer pesticides or fewer chemicals in general, but also fewer nutrients and you know, you need to make up for that. I mean, we buy in organic berries that we know like raspberries. And when we have our own, but if we need to buy some extra, we know that they are not nutritious. We just buy them for the taste, but not because we there is source of micronutrients for us. We use beef organs to make sure we get all the nutrients that we need. Pastured, pasteurized, we talked about this, I don't know, I have to repeat it again, that by itself doesn't mean anything. Plant-based and vegan, that's another, you often see it with a green leaf or whatever indicating health. I don't know when we decided that something green and plant-based is... should be mentioned in the same sentence as healthy, because first of all, I don't think plant-based from a nutritional perspective is incredibly healthy, and certainly not vegan. So if I see a product that says plant-based or vegan, unless it's a carrot that I wanna buy, or unless it's just a piece of produce for that matter, or a piece of fruit, that usually doesn't carry that label, because there was no need to point out that an apple is plant-based or vegan. But if I see it on processed food, I stay away from it because it usually means it's full of seed oils, soy, and some of the other plant-based ingredients that I do my best avoiding because I know that they are not good for me. So if you see a product with plant-based or vegan label on it, it's probably not good, especially when it comes to meat alternatives, plant-based meats, absolutely horrible. Just look at the laundry list of nasty chunk ingredients that are on there. vegan cheeses and all kinds of things, you know, vegan bacon, I mean probably the worst. I mean there are so many things that are just absolutely horrible for your health but labelled as potentially healthy and plant-based. Sugar-free we kind of alluded to. There is a wrinkle to that I want to point out and that is you know the FDA labeling guidelines as strict as they might seem, they're absolutely ridiculous and it's still the wild west out there. There are many things that you know you cannot claim as a manufacturer even though they are true and there are many things that you Can claim even though they are absolute beers and so one good example is you know sugar free Sugar free doesn't mean that the product has zero sugar It means as per FDA labeling guidelines that the product has less than zero point five grams of sugar per serving and that might not sound a lot like if you buy a you know a ten pound bag of something and that has 0.5 grams of sugar, it doesn't matter at all. But it matters when the serving size is relatively small. And one very good example is, you know, I found this, those sweeteners, you know, that you can use as a sugar alternative for coffee or tea or other beverages. And they are labeled sugar-free. And they contain, well, first of all, they contain sucralose, which is... probably the worst artificial sweetener on the market. But more than that, each little pack actually contains 0.5 grams or 0.49 or whatever, just under the threshold of actual sugar. So if you, I mean, there are people that pour four of those bags into their coffee. And you know, if they do that, they get actually two grams of sugar, which is by no means sugar-free anymore for a cup of coffee, you know, because that adds up. The more you use them, you might actually consuming a significant amount of sugar from sugar-free products. So, you have to be careful about that. And then the other side we talked about already is the use of artificial sweeteners as replacements for sugar that are maybe just as bad or for sure not ideal. They are certainly not conducive to optimal health, even if they might be, let's say you're overweight and you wanna cut out sugar, but you still need some sweets or whatever, using those non-caloric sweeteners. might be beneficial in certain cases, but they're definitely not good for you. The last one, and that's I think the most hilarious claim I've ever seen because it's an admission of feeding animals a poor diet is the label vegetarian fat, especially on eggs, chickens, and pork. You see that very often. you know, made with vegetarian or made from vegetarian fat hands or vegetarian fat pigs or, you know, on the carton of eggs, vegetarian fat hands. Neither chickens nor pigs are herbivores. They're omnivores. You know, they thrive on eating meat, insects, you know, frogs. If you see our hands, how they go nuts when they find a frog. You know, they eat that whole thing in one shot. They don't even, I guess they don't chew anyway. They just swallow and let their, and let their, what's the name of that organ? I don't remember. Just, you know, crunch it. It's like a, okay hold on a second. I'm gonna look this up and we're gonna repeat this. The gizzard, of course, the gizzard. Why did I not remember this? All right, so you should see how our hands go nuts when they find a frog. They are by no means vegetarian or plant eaters. They are omnivores and they go nuts when they catch an animal as big as frogs. They just swallow it whole. You know chickens don't you know chew anyway to just swallow and let the gizzard You know that hard muscle that you know contracts and together with you know They eat little pebbles and stuff to kind of grind the food down and so they just swallowed it that whole frog whole And have a blast with it So if you see on a label vegetarian fat from you know on eggs or whatever it just means that the brand admits feeding the animal an inappropriate diet And so, you know, that by itself would make me walk away. Unfortunately, you can find that claim on most eggs, even on some of the better ones. You know, it says vegetarian fat. Uh, just know that that's an admission of. And less than ideal, uh, product, but if that's the only product you can find, I mean, it is what it is, but just know that, um, it's, it's doesn't. It doesn't say anything about the quality of the product. If anything, it says that the eggs are probably not as good as eggs from hens that could eat, you know, insects and meat for that matter. You know, we feed our chickens sometimes, you know, leftover meat. Or if we, you know, if we kill an animal or whatever and, you know, they eat, they pack on the carcass and they go nuts on animal protein and fat. Our young one Isabella, actually, she fed our hens whenever. smaller beef tallow and they would go nuts with animal based fat. So bottom line is vegetarian fat not very good. Now the question is, now that you've heard so many terms that are potentially misleading and that you'll find probably on one of those at least on most processed foods that you can find in the store, the question is what can you do to navigate that jungle? Well, you know, first of all, remember what I said in this podcast, maybe you know look at the show notes, you know print it out. and really try to remember what each of those terms might mean. The other thing I highly recommend is whenever you approach a new product, don't even bother looking at the front, turn it around immediately and look at the ingredients list. So don't look at what it says, like, you know, it has a lot of XYZ, doesn't really matter. Turn around and look at the ingredients. Usually the ingredients are listed in the order... the amount in the product. So whatever is the first ingredient is what it has most. But that can also be misleading. I've made that or had that experience with pet food, with cat food in particular, where the first ingredient was some sort of chicken meat or whatever. The problem is, and that's especially true maybe for wet food that there is a lot of moisture in the meat so that increases the weight of the primary ingredient even though if you strip away the water it would not be the first ingredient anymore and then maybe the starches that come next are actually in higher amounts in the product than what the label would suggest. So that's again to make it even more complicated but the number one ingredient on the list might not always be the one that's actually lot in the product. If you cannot pronounce the ingredient name it's probably not good for you, you know, very simple. Be aware of any products that make claims like the ones I mentioned, you know, if there are some good products that make those claims and they're still good because they are true to what they are saying but in most cases that is not the case and so you have to be careful. Generally speaking the fewer ingredients a product has the better it is. The best products you can find have only one ingredient. like meat, you know, or in the plant world, if you buy a carrot, you know, and it's organically grown and you know where it came from, maybe from a local farmer, et cetera, you know, that's much better than probably most of, you know, the pre-cut sliced and whatever products you can find packaged in the store. My best recommendation would really be buy, you know, products that don't have an ingredient label period. Like, you know, if you buy a piece of fresh meat from the butcher, you know, you know that there is nothing in there. There are no funky juices that they put in maybe, you know, to preserve it, you know, if it's packaged already, you know, the same piece of meat might be of different quality, whether or not it's fresh and wrapped right there, or if it came pre-packaged in funky juices that might contain, you know, preservatives or whatever that you don't really care for about. And don't be afraid to ask for third-party certifications. That's particularly true for, you know, especially if you have celiac, obviously, and you want to make sure something is, truly gluten-free, you know, ask for a certification. Was it tested? But that's particularly true for supplements. You know, if a manufacturer claims, you know, oh, it's, you know, whatever, you know, low in heavy metals or, you know, or lab tested, you know, ask for the test report, you know, we at MK supplements, you know, we get asked that question a lot. In fact, we publish the test reports for, you know, for glyphosate and for heavy metals and for certain pathogens. on our web page in the help portal, you know, so people can go there and they can look it up and they can look at the test report and the third party certification thereof to make sure that what we claim is actually what's in the product. So don't be afraid to ask for this. Now with that, we're going to wrap it up. I hope this episode was helpful to you to navigate the your grocery shopping a little bit better. Again, stay away from the center of the grocery stores. You know, that's typically where all the processed foods are. Stick to the to the edge, you know, go around, that's typically what they produce in the fresh office and you know look at the labels and carefully read the labels, try to understand them. If you don't understand, walk away. You know, do your research first before buying, chances are you'll be better off and with that we're gonna wrap it up and I hope I'll see you and hear you in the next episode.
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