Food Fiction: Nutella, Campbell’s Soup, Dempster’s Bread & Kraft Dinner

Marketers will do anything to persuade unsuspecting consumers that the food products they are buying are healthy. CBC Marketplace crunched the numbers and uncovered less-than-honest marketing.

Nutella claims health benefits but is more like spreadable candy. 1 serving (1 tablespoon) of Nutella = 2 ½ hazelnuts and 11 grams (almost 3 teaspoons) of sugar. There is less sugar in standard chocolate icing than in an equivalent serving of Nutella!

Campbell’s Healthy Request Soup – Is it really just a healthy spoonful of vegetables? The label reads 470 milligrams of sodium per serving (250 milliliters). However, each container is almost 400 millilitres, which equals 750 milligrams of sodium. The product is a single serve, non-resealable container. Most people would consume the entire container since 400 milliliters is a modest portion size. The amount of sodium consumed is equal to eating an entire large bowl of potato chips!

Dempster’s Garden Vegetable Bread flaunts a hefty picture of carrots on its bag. The label reads than one serving (2 slices) = 6% of your daily Vitamin A requirement. If you were to eat a real carrot, the 6% attained from 2 slices would equal 1 gram – smaller than your thumb – of the real thing! Also, when food is processed, it loses much of its nutritional value, and is never the same as an unprocessed fruit or vegetable. An entire loaf of this bread has the equivalent Vitamin A of about 1/7 of a medium-sized carrot!

Sun Rype Fruit Source 100% Fruit Bars are basically candy masquerading as fruit. There are 29 grams of sugar in every bar. This is the equivalent to 6 ½ Oreo cookies! The actual fruit inside, the Strawberry Fruit Bar as an example, is 2% of your daily allowance of Vitamin C. To get the Vitamin C from one regular-sized real strawberry, you would have to eat 6 Fruit Bars!

Kraft Dinner Smart is not as smart and healthy as the packaging would have us believe. The KD Smart Vegetables contains only 2 tablespoons of freeze-dried cauliflower per serving. The KD Smart High Fibre contains the same amount of fibre as an apple, but it is processed fibre, so is in no way equivalent of a real apple. The KD Smart Omega 3 / Flax contains very little Flax or Omega 3. One would need to eat 177 servings (44 boxes) to consume the equivalent Omega 3 found in a portion of salmon!

Photo: http://www.kraftcanada.com/brands/kraft-dinner-smart-recipes CC

Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.