Supermarket shelves are packed full of food and drinks bearing labels with reams of information, ingredients lists and various claims that make them sound healthy. With so much information (and disinformation) available, it can be quite overwhelming to know what products to choose and which ones to leave on the shelf. With exactly that in mind, here we reveal the most common food label secrets hiding in plain sight.
Click or scroll through our gallery to discover the food label secrets you need to know about.
The ingredient list can tell us many things about the product we're about to buy, but did you know that the order in which the ingredients are listed also says a lot about it? In most countries the ingredients are arranged in descending order by weight. In other words, the main (or dominating) ingredient will always be listed first. For example, if you're buying tomato sauce and tomatoes appear way down the list after water and oil, or avocado isn't listed as the first ingredient in guacamole, you might want to consider making your own.
Food labelled as organic has to contain at least 95% of organic ingredients both in the US and the UK, however, something labelled as 'made with organic ingredients' can contain up to 30% non-organic ingredients. Do be aware that organic doesn't necessarily mean healthier across the board, either – the label has nothing to do with the calories, fat, carbs or sugar present in the food.
By now we're pretty clued up on animal welfare and know that higher quality products generally mean higher quality of life for the animals. But nothing is as straightforward as that. For a product to be labelled 'free range', the animal has to have access to an outside area for at least part of the day, but in the US there’s no specification as to the length of time, so could be as little as five minutes. In the UK, the rules are stricter; look out for the Soil Association label for eggs from much happier hens.
According to the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), when the term 'natural' appears on a product, it doesn't necessarily mean a huge amount - manufactured products such as certain Cheetos, lemon-flavoured Oreos and Skippy peanut butter all have the word 'natural' written across their labels. In the US, policies regarding to the natural label do not relate to the use of synthetic pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and genetically modified organisms in both livestock and crops. In short, if you’re surprised that a product carries a ‘natural’ label, it probably doesn’t deserve it.
There's a very simple explanation as to why these terms aren’t particularly relevant if you're looking to improve your diet. For a product to still taste great, when something is taken away, something else needs to replace it – in low sugar or sugar-free foods it's usually more fat and other additives, while the lack of fat in low-fat food is often disguised with large amounts of sugar. Read the nutritional breakdown carefully and choose a product that's better for you all-round.
If a label says there's zero sugar or zero fat, you'd assume there's none of it in the product, but it's not quite as straightforward as that. The FDA allows food producers to label their product 'zero' if it contains less than 0.5 grams of that particular ingredient per serving. Eat several servings of a supposedly zero-fat or zero-sugar food and you could end up unwittingly consuming fat or sugar without meaning to.
Serving sizes are used to manipulate consumers into buying certain products too. From a visual perspective, if the food is displayed on the packaging, it's very rarely just one serving so the consumer thinks they’re getting more for their money. Bags of crisps and popcorn are particular culprits here; the amount of calories, fat and sugar will normally be listed per serving, making the food appear healthier than it is. In reality, you're very likely to devour an entire bag of crisps (for example), rather than a single serving, thus ingesting extra calories, fat and sugar.
Another trick that consumers need to be aware of is label padding. In simple terms, this is when food manufacturers (especially processed food producers eager to jump on a health food trend) add a miniscule amount of a 'good' ingredient in order to then be able to market the foodstuff as healthy or containing a certain desirable mineral, vitamin or ingredient. Legally, there are no rules that prevent food producers from doing this.
It's safe to say most of us would assume 'baked, not fried' crisps are much better for us, but there are other ways in which fat can be added in order to make food taste good. Compare the labels of both fried and baked crisps and you might just find that the saturated fat content is rather high in both.
Vegetarians and vegans might want to check the label on presumably vegetarian foods twice. For example, many brands, fast food outlets and restaurants use lard (or pork fat) to inject an especially savoury and rich flavour into their refried beans. Check before ordering and take time to read labels when shopping – in the US popular brands like Old El Paso and Rosarita both speficy lard in the ingredients list of their traditional refried beans.
If you have a fish allergy or are vegan or vegetarian, make reading food labels a matter of course – even seemingly innocent products can contain surprising ingredients. Worcestershire sauce, for example, hides a secret ingredient that's been used in the making of this condiment since its inception in 1835 – anchovies. The fish are packed in salt and left to mature for 18 months and are then used to make the famed finished product.
Seaweed is a popular ingredient found in many dishes across the Asian continent, but did you know an extract made from seaweed is also used as a thickener, stabiliser and emulsifier in a number of foods too? Carrageenan is commonly added to many dairy alternative products, including soya, rice and almond milk and is also often used instead of gelatine in plant-based products. Despite being a natural ingredient, there is some evidence to suggest that carrageenan can have a negative impact on the digestive system.
It might not be alluded to on the label, but meat products often contain antibiotics. While antibiotic use to promote growth in animals was banned in the EU in 2006 and in the US in 2017, antibiotics are routinely fed to livestock to protect against illnesses. There are still serious concerns about the close links between over-use of antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance. Data gathered in 2018 revealed that nearly three-quarters of the worldwide supply of antibiotics is used on animals rather than people, which raises further concerns about the possible effects of antibiotic resistance.
Injecting poultry with a saltwater solution – a process often referred to as plumping – has been common practice for decades. Manufacturers claim it makes the meat juicier and improves the taste, but many people argue its main aim is to increase profits due to the increased weight.
Many food producers will use the ‘no artificial additives’ claim to trick consumers into thinking their product is healthy. But, rather confusingly, food that's not packed full of artificial additives can still contain additives that are produced in a factory from natural substances and are artificially added to the product. If you want to eat as naturally as possible, do be aware that ‘no artificial additives’ doesn’t guarantee no additives at all.
Many processed foods such as cakes, ice cream, soft drinks and sweets contain artificial colours, with E102 or tartrazine being one of the most common. This synthetic additive is used to imbue products with a bright yellow colour was linked to childhood hyperactivity in 2007, which resulting in an EU requirement to put a warning label on such products containing the artificial ingredients. There's no such requirement in the US though and there are still plenty of processed foods on supermarket shelves that contain tartrazine.
Carmine is a red food colouring that's made by boiling the shells of cochineal bugs (a type of beetle) and is commonly used to colour foods like sweets, lollipops and dessert sauces. Although harmless to most, it can cause severe allergic reactions so the FDA requires it to be clearly labelled as carmine on products. If you see carmine, cochineal extract or E120 on the label, you’re eating powdered bug. Not keen? The synthetic alternatives, Red No. 2 and Red No. 40, don't sound much better as they're made from petroleum products.
Often used as a natural resin to add a glossy coating to foods like jelly beans, shellac can also be found in nail varnishes, wood finishes and furniture polish. A sticky substance excreted by the female lac bug, native to forests of India and Thailand, shellac can even be used on citrus, apples and other fruits as a surface treatment to give them a glossy shine. Approved for use in food in most countries, it's typically labelled as additive E904.
Chances are you currently have a shop-bought loaf of bread, packet of biscuits or perhaps a cake in your kitchen. L-Cysteine, called E920 on the label, is an amino acid that's used to strengthen the dough and improve shelf-life in such products. What might surprise you is that this additive comes from duck and chicken feathers, cow horns, pig bristles and... human hair which is dissolved in acid to isolate the L-Cysteine compound. Although in recent years most L-Cysteine is synthetically produced, most labels don't disclose where the additive has been derived from.
This surprising ingredient gives a deep smoky flavour and aroma to foods such as barbecue sauces, baked beans, hot dogs and beef jerky. It’s created by capturing the condensation of smoke in cold air from burning wood or sawdust. The droplets containing the intense smoky aroma can then be used as an alternative to actual smoking. On labels you'll typically see it as smoke flavouring – it's what gives sauces like Heinz Classic Barbecue Sauce and Sweet Baby Ray's Original Barbecue Sauce their signature smoky depth of flavour.
Most people are pretty clued up on sugar and know not to buy products with a high sugar content. But this also means food producers are much smarter about hiding sugars. For example, sugar can appear in the ingredients list as glucose, lactose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), honey, maple syrup and many others. This means that the presence of sugar can be hidden in the ingredients list by naming each type of sugar used. This can then sometimes sum up to be a substantial amount of sugar so check the total content in the nutritional fact box.
Another easy trick used by food producers is claiming there's no added sugar, which automatically makes consumers think it must be better than others. However, what about the sugar that's already there? Something like milk or fruit contain quite a lot of sugar naturally so if something is made out of those ingredients, it will automatically have sugar too. Don't assume 'no added sugar' means no sugar at all and read the nutritional information carefully.
Discover your favourite foods that contain some really unexpected ingredients
When it comes to truffle oil, it's more surprising what isn't in it than what is. It's no secret that fresh truffles are pretty hard to come by and harvest, which makes them incredibly expensive. So it shouldn't really come as a shock that most truffle oils haven't been anywhere near a real truffle. If you've tasted fresh shaved truffles and foods with truffle oil, you'll know the flavour differs considerably. This is because most oils are infused with synthetically made ingredients, specifically 2,4-dithiapentane, which is an aromatic molecule that gives truffles their smell.
Another common food that surprises with what it's lacking is white chocolate, which technically isn't even chocolate at all. While milk and dark chocolate are made from cocoa solids – cocoa beans removed from pods, fermented, dried, roasted and cracked open – white chocolate isn't. A blend of cocoa butter, milk products, vanilla, sugar and fatty emulsifier lecithin is what makes white chocolate. You might be wondering whether the presence of cocoa butter might be enough to consider it chocolate, but it's only the cocoa solids, or nibs, that define chocolate.
Many of us enjoy a range of baked pumpkin treats come autumn, but did you know you might not actually be baking with pumpkin at all if you use the canned stuff? One of the most popular brands in America, Libby's Pure Pumpkin, actually uses Dickinson squash – a close relative to butternut squash. But why can it sell it as '100% Pure Pumpkin'? Well, it's because the FDA allows it. Its policy says that products made from "golden-fleshed, sweet squash or mixtures of such squash and field pumpkin" can be sold as pumpkin.