Sir Francis Bacon had it right when he said that “knowledge is power.”  When he shared his philosophy, he was trying to point out that being learned would allow for greater influence and power.  I’m not too concerned with gaining knowledge to have influence and power over others, but I do think that gaining knowledge for one’s self is truly empowering.  

Oddly enough, some of the most important choices made concerning health are uninformed or misinformed and the eventual consequence is subpar wellbeing.  Rash correlations are assumed as causation, current fads are taken as facts and suddenly healthy habits are taboo and dense decisions are trendy.  Too many motivators shift the window of what real health looks like and what nutrition really is.

On the other hand, there is just so much to try to take in and understand, it’s impossible to know it all or even to know who to trust.  In a time when social media influencers are making health recommendations without any actual understanding, it seems that we have to take on Mr. Bacon’s advice to gain our own knowledge to empower our own lives.

Going to the grocery store can be overwhelming with all of the eye catching marketing tools used to convince consumers to buy one product over another.  Understanding what of the details are pertinent and what are irrelevant will help make a truly informed decision and not one that is based on emotion.

Buzzwords splashed across food labels are not meant to make it easy to compare food items.  Those words are meant to draw customers in and feel good about the product and the price they are about to pay but might not have anything to do with the actual nutritional value of the product.

Many of the claims such as “organic,” “all-natural,” or “pasture-raised” have more to do with how the crops and livestock were raised rather than its nutritional value.  How they are grown can have a bearing on the final nutrition of the product but the difference is usually very little if significant at all.  And just because something is still found in its natural state doesn’t mean that it’s healthy.  Poison ivy is natural but I don’t think it would be healthy to eat.

Because different food labels are used to market products instead of informing consumers, product labels can often be misleading.  The Non-GMO label is often added when it is totally unnecessary, a label meant to distinguish between foods that have been modified with biotechnology.  For example, there are no Non-GMO tomatoes in existence, yet the label can be found on tomatoes.  Similarly, gluten-free labels can be found on food products that don’t contain any wheat which is where gluten is found.  Yes, milk is gluten free, but it is also completely wheat free which means that the label isn’t there to help educate, but rather
to manipulate.

In the event that labels are following the rules, they are finding loopholes in the letter of the law.  For example, some labels might tout that they have “no sugar added” but there are other sources of sugar like honey or agave that are plenty sugary or are loaded with naturally occurring sugars.  They might even follow the rules of naming each sweetener in the ingredient list but that usually puts them down the index of contributing components and makes them appear to be less than what they would be if tallied up together.  And all too often, if there is nothing there to make it sweet, flavor is added in poor quality fats to make up the difference.   

The list of food labeling gimmicks goes on and on that will misguide, mislead, and totally misinform consumers.  A product labeled “contains real sea salt” has no more nutrition than table salt.  Breads bragging over the number of grains means very little if they aren’t whole grain, however many added.  Words like “super-food” and “functional” are all about swagger and nothing about service because all whole-foods are filled with crucial nutrients a healthy body needs.

I’m not out to tell anyone how or what to eat, I just believe that you should make an informed choice.  The more you know about food labels, the marketing gimmicks used and what information on the product wrapper is useful, the more power you have in making that informed choice.