Article 1 - thinkprogress.org by Tara Culp- Ressler

Article 1 - 

How Food Companies Trick You Into Thinking You're Buying Something Healthy.

There exists lots of technical words which are used to make a food product look more healthy and nutritious. some of these words are 'Gluten-free' , 'Organic, 'Natural, 'Wholegrain' etc. Ressler says that Americans are affected a lot from these words, other writes says that it is not only Americans. These words can be misleading as they are not always 100% true and factual. According to Ressler 'buzzwords mislead Americans to believe they're buying healthy food' (2014). 

The university of Houston researched and studied this deceptive technique. They found that ''those words create a 'false sense of health''.  they are also aware that such words can mislead people to focus on them rather than other more important warnings  that may be found on a product label. One of the researchers, Temple Northup writes that nowadays more people are trying to more attentive to what food they consume in order to be more healthy but advertisers and marketing agencies are taking the opportunity to these false labelling are misleading consumers. In order to reach factual conclusions, Northup makes an online survey. This survey depicts real food packaging pictures with these professional terms like for example 'organic Annie's Bunny Fruit Snacks' and Cherry 7-Up with antioxidants'. He found out that people found these products healthier than others without the terms. In reality antioxidants are not beneficial at all. 'Cherry 7-Up - it's mostly filled with high fructose syrup or sugar' writes Ressler. Northup adds that this idea is giving deceiving clues to something that is not really healthy. 

Apart from these terms, colours and illustrations can also be deceptive. In fact Ressler continues to write that 'people are more likely to assume that products with green labels are more nutritious' (2014). People also may assume that products with words like 'fair trade' are more healthy even though this has nothing to do with the health  instructions. Ressler says that nowadays children can identify junk food brand much more than healthier brands and all this thanks to manipulative advertising techniques. These techniques can be deceiving because people do not understand the nutrition labels on the products says Ressler. Northum confirms this by asking people to rate product according to label. he concludes that most of them cannot. Some groups like the CSP is continuously pressuring the FDA to act on these misleading advertising. FDA has released some claims but as Reseller writes it will take years for this to change. In 2013, a lawsuit against 7-Up was filled because of their false labelling on antioxidants sodas.