A Glasgow University Research team has uncovered a series of surreptitious food packaging designs suggesting that food which has been labelled as healthy and good for kids is in fact misleading.
Dr Davie explained that parents are being misled by “manipulative marketing campaigns” and “crafty messaging” and has called for more stringent rules on the messaging.
This follows recent news that the APPG on a Fit and Healthy Childhood demanded regulations be put in place by the government to ensure companies aren’t proactively targeting children and tone done their sometimes cynical methods for doing so.
Examples of misleading packaging include foods being labelled as containing one of your five a day not living up to the claim. Meanwhile healthy fruit juices often exceeded the recommended daily allowance of 150ml of fruit juice.
Healthy children’s yoghurts were also found to contain unexpected sugars from added fruit purees.
One of the researchers said “It is important parents don’t look at the claims in isolation but look at all the ingredients on the pack and judge the whole quality of the food.”
More than half of the 80 fruit drinks analysed claimed that they contained no added sugar but more than half of these had substitutes in the form of puree and concentrated fruit juice which has sugar that is already broken down and can be absorbed quickly by the body meaning children become hungrier faster and the child suffers from possible tooth damage and decay.
Foods with barely any fruit or vegetable were touting they contained one of the five a day in a cynical attempt to mislead parents into believing they were making healthy choices for their children.
“It is clear that families are being influenced by surreptitious food packaging. We strongly support the researchers’ call for stricter regulations on composition and labelling.” Dr Davie, of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health
Unsurprisingly a rep from the food and drinks federation commented that many companies gave even more information on packaging than they were legally required to and that sugar is a naturally occurring substance in fruit and that much of the food is still classed as healthy under advertising rules.
It is believed she was unable to comment further, not wanting to be late for an appointment with a world renowned trident manufacturer.
If as she said, no rules are being broken then perhaps those last comments actually give weight to the call for stricter advertising rules being called for by multiple paediatricians, children’s health organisations, researchers and child interest groups.
The work is published in the journal the Archives of Disease in Childhood
Further reading: Arsenic and lead are in your kid’s fruit juice, report says.
