These are the most misleading products in the supermarket
Truffle cheese with barely a sliver of truffle, supposedly fresh juice and berry tea without a berry in sight: you’re being conned right there in the supermarket. Foodwatch is taking action against this; they present a top five of the most misleading products in the supermarket. Which deception is the worst? That product wins the Golden Wind Egg 2020.
Foodwatch sees itself as a food watchdog: they keep an eye on things to make sure we aren’t being duped in the supermarket. Foodwatch previously showed how subtle – and irritatingly effective – marketing aimed at children can be, which food labels contain outright lies, and with which products you’re simply being taken for a ride. Every year, they award the Golden Wind Egg to a product that is hugely misleading.
These are the five most misleading products of 2020:
Super-fresh orange juice
The supermarket chiller contains bottles of Appelsientje orange juice. In the refrigerator, so that means it’s fresh, you’d think? Nope, it’s the same juice as in a shelf-stable carton, good for months and made from orange concentrate. The small difference: that bottle in the chiller costs 44 cents more.
Be-Kind bar
A bar in brown, alternative-looking packaging. The packaging says in huge letters: PROTEIN. That looks healthy! But the bar is mainly packed with… sugar and fat.
Nutella Cups
Small packages of Nutella. Is that a good product? You certainly pay much more for it than for Nutella in a jar, and those plastic tubs are nothing but extra pollution and plastic. Besides: why would you suddenly want to spread Nutella on something while you’re on the go? What a ridiculous product.
Truffle cream cheese
This cream cheese suddenly appeared on the editorial desk, and everyone was horrified: ugh, is this cheese spoiled or something? Quite apart from that – because that’s a matter of taste, which is indisputable – Philadelphia’s truffle cheese contains 0.07 percent truffle. That’s a very small truffle indeed.
Acai berry tea
Super-healthy, acai berries. So you go ahead and buy Zonnatura acai berry tea, right? And it’s a little more expensive, but hey, you can’t put a price tag on health. But the acai is a so-called lure ingredient: it’s displayed prominently on the packaging, yet turns out to make up just 0.5 percent of the tea.
Foodwatch’s actions are effective. Producers often adjust their products following a nomination for that striking award. In 2017, even six of the seven nominated producers changed their product, meaning Jumbo’s corn bread – it didn’t contain a single gram of corn – automatically became the winner.
Also read:
- You’re being conned by your breakfast: wholegrain isn’t wholegrain at all
- Complaining elevated to an art form: those spareribs are far too spicy, I want my money back
- 19 times we were seriously ripped off by misleading packaging
