The highs & lows of health washing

Avoid falling for false food claims by reading labels clearly, suggests Suparna Mukherjee

Invest in good health not glossy packaging, to avoid health washing — a term used to describe the activities of companies that position themselves as leaders in the crusade for good health while engaging in practices that may be contributing to our poor health.

Although health farming started at the beginning of human civilisation, with time, farming changed to agricultural production with different domesticated processes. Agricultural production also opened another dimension known as food industrialisation. It gave way to different food processing, food preserving and eye-catchy food packaging methods. And different tropical foods started being available at our doorsteps. In this journey, a lot of healthy and unhealthy chemicals started getting used by the food industry such as emulsifiers, preservatives and so on to improve the shelf life of foods and indirectly welcomed many unwanted chemicals into edible food. With time, researchers established the direct relation between co-morbid diseases and the importance of a diet. The general population started giving value to nutrition. Health and wellness started gaining attention. People started valuing the quality of foods, balancing nutrition, and value of nutrients and so on. They started focusing on nutrition very seriously, understood the value of natural fresh foods and the downside of consuming processed foods that may taste great, but come with ingredients that could be harmful to health if consumed excessively. The food industry was forced to rethink its food selling strategy. They shifted their business model from junk food production to better nutritional foods. But industrial food production always required multi-processing, which produce ultra-processed foods. Food industries were trying hard to balance the expectation of taste and the quality of food. And some companies who were not able to balance started being inclined to taste and shelf life as both are directly connected with the growth of a business. And thus health wash started. In health wash strategy, food packets were spiced up with claims of being healthy based on one or two nutrient availability/ unavailability like “low sugar,” “added extra fibre” etc., so that a consumer assumes it to be healthy whereas the same food may contain trans-fats that are more than the expected quantity making it to be unhealthy food. Here are some things to avoid so that you don’t fall prey to health washing:

Avoid picking food that says “natural flavour” or “natural colours” as there is no such thing called natural colours or flavour and everything that is added is harmful to health. Some food companies print “organic” on their labels, think before you pick those. Just because it is printed “organic” doesn’t mean it’s healthy. A food item is healthy when the added ingredients are not changing its natural nutrient ratio and the benefits that one can gain from the food.

Read the package thoroughly before choosing. In India, packaging and labelling are mandated by FASSI and FASSI making it compulsory for companies to mention details like best before, date of manufacture, date of packaging, food ingredients, allergen declaration, declaration of veg or non-veg, nutrition label information to be printed in packed foods.

(The author is a clinical nutritionist.)