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'Consumer counter-revolution' driven by misleading food labeling

Packaged Facts: "The mainstream food industry has paid a price for foot-dragging and sleight-of-hand on nutritional and labeling issues, leading to consumer counter-revolutions including the current clean label movement."

June 17, 2015

As partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats) are no longer "generally recognized as safe," according to the FDA, they will become subject to premarket approval as they are now considered food additives by the federal agency, Packaged Facts, a division of MarketResearch.com, said in a press release.

Foods containing unapproved food additives are deemed contaminated under U.S. law and cannot legally be sold. Meat and dairy products with naturally occurring trans fats found in small amounts are not additives and do not fall under the ban, the company said. 

With the new ban on trans fats, "no trans fats" labels on food products will soon become obsolete.

"The mainstream food industry has paid a price for foot-dragging and sleight-of-hand on nutritional and labeling issues, leading to consumer counter-revolutions including the current clean label movement," states Packaged Facts. The research firm's November 2014 survey found 23 percent of U.S. adults strongly agree and 38 percent somewhat agree "grocery manufacturers often mislead by highlighting only the positive nutritional qualities in their products, not the negative ones," the company said in the release. At the opposite end, 3 percent strongly disagree and 6 percent somewhat disagree. Packaged Facts published findings from the study in the Food Formulation Trends: Ingredients Consumers Avoid report.