10 May 2010
Read It: I Can See Your Halo
The concept of a “health halo” is not new. The New York Times published a story on the effects of health halos a couple years ago. But they’re just as relevant today as they were then because every single month, new foods with health halos appear on store shelves.
What’s a health halo? It’s the effect of a food label or claim that magically subtracts calories and adds health to any product. Some examples of labels that produce health halos:
- low fat/fat free
- low-sodium
- trans-fat free
- all natural
- organic
- whole grain
- cholesterol free
These kinds of labels cause people to underestimate the calories and overestimate the health value of a dish. The halo effect can be so deceiving that it makes people to eat more than they otherwise would. In an experiment using Subway and Micky D’s, researchers found that Subway’s low-fat advertising had a big halo effect:
Even though the Subway sandwich had more calories than the Big Mac, the people ordering it were more likely to add a large nondiet soda and cookies to the order. So while they may have felt virtuous, they ended up with meals averaging 56 percent more calories than the meals ordered from McDonald’s.
Okay, so let’s break this down. Food X is labeled or advertised as low-fat, so it has a health halo. People think it’s virtuous. They eat more of it than they otherwise would. They get fatter/sicker. So while it’s great that we’re trying to healthify our food, it looks like it’s almost having the opposite effect.
There’s really only one solution to this: WE HAVE TO STOP BUYING THE LABEL!
You guys just can’t trust any front-of-the-box labels at all. Of course, the easiest way to do this is to start buying more foods that don’t have labels — produce, fresh fish, meat, whole grains or dried beans from the bulk bin. None of those have labels. If you DO have to buy foods with labels, just skip the front of the package completely. The only thing you need to concern yourself with is the back of the package: the nutrition facts and the ingredients.
Front-of-the-box labels are increasingly meaningless — don’t trust them. If the food you want has a package, just read the ingredients and the nutrition facts and make your decision based on those. Let’s not dumb down food by relying on sweeping and meaningless claims made by manufacturers to sell their product.
