Puzzling Food Labels

Imagine three items in your grocery cart: Peppercorn Ranch SunChips, Cocoa Krispies and Country Crock margarine.

The first is stamped with a red heart, indicating that it's a good source of whole grains. The second has a banner saying that the vitamin-enriched rice cereal will boost your immunity. The third bears a green label deeming it a "Smart Choice," a green seal of approval on the front of food packaging to indicate healthier fare.

If you are like the typical hurried consumer, chances are you don't spend much time considering how such messages end up there. Here's one way to look at it: The chips have no trans fat and contain 18 grams of whole grains; the cereal boasts one-quarter of one's recommended daily vitamin intake; the margarine has fewer calories and less cholesterol than butter.

Yet, even with this information, it can be hard to understand why a bag of chips with more than 20 ingredients—including corn syrup—and a cereal laced with sugar and semi-sweet chocolate, are purportedly good for one's health.

In Pictures: Eight Puzzling Food Labels

That confusion can often be traced to inconclusive research and eager marketing claims. While science has given us clues about how to achieve optimal health, researchers don't yet know how the body best absorbs certain nutrients. Meanwhile, the food manufacturers behind the labeling have a lot at stake: The market for so-called functional foods and beverages—or products that offer improved health through supplements or a combination of healthful ingredients—was more than $30 billion last year.

The gray areas in the research mean that creating the ideal diet—beyond eating whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean protein—remains a bit of a guessing game. It doesn't help that a product can come close to exceeding or just barely offering a vitamin or nutrient and still be sold as good for you. And that's when food labels can sometimes give way to potentially misleading health claims.

Parsing the claims

Marion Nestle, Ph.D., a professor in the department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, has a rule about food products that bear health claims: Don't buy them.

The box of immunity-boosting Cocoa Krispies is a useful example, she says. The Kellogg cereal may be loaded with antioxidants, but current research is inconclusive about the health benefits of these compounds, which are predominantly found in fruits and vegetables. They have been shown to protect cells against deterioration, but it's unclear if consuming them in a supplement form is effective, and some research has shown that consuming excessive amounts of Vitamin E, in particular, can be harmful.

Kellogg spokeswoman Susanne Norwitz said in an e-mail that the claim is based on peer-reviewed research and statements from the Institute of Medicine, a private organization created to advise the federal government and the public on scientific issues.

Kellogg, she said, "is confident that the claim about the antioxidants and nutrients in Rice Krispies cereals helping support the body's immune system is supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence."

Earlier this year, the company was reprimanded when it used the results of a study to advertise Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal as "clinically" shown to improve a child's attentiveness by 20 percent. The Federal Trade Commission, a government agency that regulates marketing claims, declared its study unsatisfactory and prohibited Kellogg from making similar claims about its breakfast and snack products.