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Nicolette van Dam’s vegetable candies nominated for most misleading food product

Nicolette van Dam groentesnoepjes

Health claims on products that are not healthy at all, ingredients that are barely in them or have been replaced by shady alternatives, tampering with their origin…. Food manufacturers use an incredible number of misleading and fraudulent tricks to persuade you to buy their products. Fortunately, there are also organisations that draw your attention to this. Every year, Foodwatch awards the Golden Wind Egg to an extremely misleading product. These are the three most misleading products of 2021.

Foto van culinair journalist Sharon van Lokhorst

This is the 11th time that the Golden Wind Egg has been awarded for the most misleading food product. Cast your vote too, because the more deception is exposed, the fairer, more sustainable and healthier the products in supermarkets will become.

‘Recyclable prawn cracker bags’ from Conimex

With a recyclable prawn cracker bag, Conimex seems like a sustainable benefactor, but in reality it is simply piggybacking on new national policy. Conimex proudly displays ‘Recyclable packaging’ on its prawn cracker bags. And it doesn’t stop there: the website now also features a major story about recycling and ‘the road to sustainability’. Apparently, Conimex is ‘working hard on that’.

In practice, this means that, as a result of a new national regulation (and therefore through no merit of Conimex), consumers can now dispose of crisp bags with plastic waste instead of residual waste. Since 2020, waste processors in the Netherlands have been better able to sort and process this waste. But the fact that it is separated does not mean that it is actually recycled. The chance of incineration is just as high. Instead of recycling the prawn cracker bags, Conimex is therefore mainly recycling someone else’s work. And there is nothing very sustainable about that.

‘Poké Bowl with lots of delicious vegetables’ from Knorr

According to Knorr, its Poké Bowl kit makes it easy to put a dish with lots of vegetables on the table. But the only vegetable actually included in the kit is 5% red pepper in the topping mix. So Knorr mainly offers hot air. Knorr proudly displays a beautiful picture of a healthy Poké Bowl ‘with lots of delicious vegetables’ on the packaging of its World Dishes product. It even contains 258 grams per person per serving! But anyone who turns the package around gets a nasty surprise: there is only 5% red pepper in the small sachet of topping mix. You still have to add the rest of the vegetables yourself. And when you open the package, it turns out to consist mainly of air—not just figuratively, but literally too. Knorr takes its main inspiration from marketing tricks, rather than from ‘Honolulu’.

‘Veggie candy – let’s make it fun. Better. Yum!’ from Let’s

Nicolette van Dam recommends her ‘responsible’ vegetable and fruit candies 6 times a week, including once before exercising. Yet each serving contains just as much sugar as regular gummy bears. It sounds too good to be true, and it is. Nicolette van Dam came up with vegetable candies: a new way for children, in her own words, ‘to get the vegetables onto their plates’. Even though they are candies, consisting mainly of sugars and some beetroot or fruit juice concentrate. ‘Natural’ sugars are still sugars. And children should preferably eat these 6 out of 7 days, 5 portions to take to school and one after exercising? Nicolette uses the image of vegetables and fruit to spruce up her unhealthy product, while the candies still contain just as much sugar as, for example, Haribo Goldbears. Not responsible marketing.

Golden Wind Egg 2021

Which product are you going to vote for? Which deception is the worst? That product wins the Golden Wind Egg 2021.

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