10 Food Label Lies

Don’t spend extra money buying into marketing hype and misinformation. Look for food claims and labels you can trust.

Nutrition Facts

The lie: The FDA allows food manufacturers to use averages for the calorie counts, salt content and fat grams (and any other information on the Nutrition Facts panel) of their foods, and food manufacturers are allowed to be off by as much as 20 percent. So that 500-calorie frozen dinner you're eating could have as many as 600 calories. If every meal you ate had 100 extra calories, you'd gain an additional 30 pounds this year. Another sticky label? Trans fats. The FDA allows manufacturers to put “0” if the amount of trans fats per serving is below .5 grams. “That’s a quarter of a day’s worth,” says Jayne Hurley, RD, senior nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, who notes that 2 grams is what health experts suggest should be your daily limit.

To get the real thing: Avoid packaged foods. The foods without "Nutrition Facts" labels—fruits and vegetables—are the healthiest foods. When you do buy them, read ingredient labels, not nutrition labels, to avoid trans fats. And avoid any product with partially hydrogenated oils listed. “If there’s no partially hydrogenated oil, the trans-fat content really is zero," Hurley says.