Cornell study reveals hidden nutritional trade-offs in healthy food labels

A new analysis of nearly 150,000 food and beverage products launched in the United States over the past decade, found that products bearing health-related claims are not only not consistently healthier, they are sometimes less nutritious. Reducing one unhealthy ingredient sometimes means they added more of a different one.

The analysis was led by Miguel Gomez, professor of food marketing at Cornell University, and Pei Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab. The study drew on a decade of new-product data from the market research firm Mintel.

"One day I went to a supermarket, and I noticed there was original flavor and lower-fat cream cheese," she said. "They had reduced the fat, but they had more total sugars and more sodium. There are so many label claims on packages. Our main question was whether products with claims are healthier than those without health claims."

The Cornell team applied the Nutrient Profiling Model, a scoring system developed by the U.K. Food Standards Agency, which – unlike a single-nutrient claim – weighs a product's full nutritional makeup at once, penalizing excess sugar, sodium, saturated fat and calories while rewarding fiber, protein and fruit and vegetable content.

Applying that lens to the American marketplace, the researchers found that, of the newly launched products they analyzed, two-thirds qualified as less healthy overall even though half of the products had on-package health claims.

The trouble, the researchers found, often comes down to trade-offs hidden in the fine print of formulation. A "reduced sodium" soda, for instance, is disproportionately likely to make up for it with extra sugar. A "no trans-fat" packaged meal often leans harder on saturated fat and sodium instead. The claim is technically true. The overall nutritional picture, the study suggests, doesn't necessarily improve, and can sometimes get worse in another direction.

Beverages showed the starkest gaps, with claims like "low sodium," "sugar free" and "low saturated fat" the most likely to diverge from actual nutritional quality.

Perhaps the most striking finding involved a category of labeling that isn't regulated as a nutrition claim at all: "natural." Terms like organic, non-GMO and whole grain say nothing formally about a product's sugar, sodium or fat content. Yet prior consumer research cited by the authors, has repeatedly shown that shoppers read "natural" as shorthand for "healthy" anyway, a psychological shortcut researchers call the "halo effect."

The Food and Drug Administration finalized an updated definition of the "healthy" claim in recent years and has proposed a new front-of-package labeling scheme intended to summarize a product's nutrition profile at a glance – an approach closer to the systems already used in the U.K., and to mandatory warning labels adopted in Chile and Mexico.

We provide some direction for policymakers in our paper. The general idea is to transition from single claims to a broader nutrient profile style. In countries like Chile or Mexico, they use traffic stop signs to warn consumers about high salt, sugar and fat, and this limits the positioning of products in the supermarket."

Miguel Gomez, professor of food marketing, Cornell University

For now, Gomez and Zhou say, the practical advice for shoppers is unglamorous but familiar: A claim on the front of a box is a hint, not a verdict. The nutrition label on the back – added sugars, sodium, saturated fat, all of it together – still tells the fuller story.