Do you read the nutrition and ingredients information on the back of the packages you buy? If you don’t, or if you don’t know what to look for, you may be falling into one of the food industry’s greatest marketing traps. Companies know that many of us are trying to make healthy eating choices or be more conscientious about the ingredients in the food we eat. This is why marketers design the front of their packages with words and images that declare their products as all-natural, healthy options with only 100 calories per serving! Turn the box over and you may get an entirely different story. In fact, here you can read an article the New York Times ran in September 2009 about ten giant food companies attempting to mislead consumers in this very way through their Smart Choices program, which gave foods like Fruit Loops and mayonnaise it’s seal of approval. Ultimately, there was enough opposition to the program that many of the companies dropped out, and Smart Choices has yet to reach a supermarket near you.

The FDA currently does not have regulations in place about front of the package nutrition labeling, although after the Smart Choices fiasco, as well as some more recent problems with other food manufacturers, the agency is considering drafting some rules.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do to make sure you are indeed making wise decisions at the market:

Check the ingredients label. The ingredients in a product are listed in descending order according to how much of that ingredient is in the product. For example, according the nutritional information available on Minute Maid’s website, in their Enhanced Pomegranate Lemonade, the first two ingredients are filtered water and high fructose corn syrup. Pomegranate and lemon juice from concentrate are number three. This means this beverage is mostly sugar (an artificial and highly controversial sugar at that) and water. However, the label on the front declares in huge type “Antioxidant Vitamins C & E to Help Support a Healthy Immune System.” This is deceptive, because this juice has hardly any juice in it!

Look at the serving size. I was at the store the other day and I picked up a package of goji berry trail mix. It seems like you can’t go anywhere these days without being bombarded by the health benefits of some new, exotic berry. I was intrigued, so I did as I always do before I put something in my cart; I turned the bag over and checked out the facts. They didn’t look too bad until I looked at the serving size: 10 grams. 10 GRAMS IS LESS THAN ONE TABLESPOON! This small bag contained over 50 servings! Even if I had been extremely disciplined and had only ¼ cup of trail mix (which is the serving size usually given for such things and is not that large of a quantity), I would have consumed five times the recommended serving size and five times the calories and fat I thought I was getting if I hadn’t been paying attention.

Low fat does means low fat, that’s it. You cannot assume that a claim on the front of package will tell you anything about the rest of the product’s nutritional makeup. For example, the total calorie count in a low fat product can be almost the same or even more than the calorie count of the original. This happens because the product has been pumped full sugar in order to make it palatable once the fat has been removed. Sodium levels can also be affected this way. Depending on your nutritional needs and restrictions, this might be an even bigger problem than the original fat content!

Remember, the front of a package is an advertisement designed to entice you to put that product in your cart. Make sure you know the facts!