'Nutritional Facts' labels fudging on the facts

By Mitch Lipka
South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"I think we're seeing systematic, intentional misbranding."
Sen. Steven Geller, D - Fla.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The "Nutritional Facts" panels on food labels that we've come to rely on to make healthy eating choices often are wrong. Sometimes the claims on the packages and the reality are a world apart.

Some of the mistakes are so bad that people on sugar-free diets were eating spoonfuls of sugar without knowing it. People hoping to eat lean are ingesting fat. And those counting on their carbohydrates will have to redo their math and add a whole lot more to get the right total.  In the past year, three out of four diet products tested Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services laboratory proved to have erroneous information in their "Nutritional Facts" panels or on their labels. The Tallahassee, Fla. - bases agency frequently tests for the accuracy of nutritional labels, but rarely makes the finding public.

Using Florida's public records laws, the Sun-Sentinel obtained the results of the lab's tests conducted since 1999. An analysis of the data showed nearly 1,000 items with inaccurate food labels.  In the past year alone, more than one in 10 bakery products and candies tested in Florida's lab were misbranded. So were on of four dressings or condiments.

Among the products found with erroneous label claims:

Dr. Atkins Chocolate Mocha Bar. The label claims 3.5 grams of carbohydrates per serving. Tests showed it actually has 19.7 grams of carbs.

Few national brands are on the misbranded products, experts said, because the big companies are careful to get the information right and retain customer trust.  Offenders tend to be specialty and regional products - many of them product lines that command top dollar from consumers willing to pay more to thing they're eating less.  Food manufacturers are required by state and federal law to accurately represent what the products contain. Dietitians tell us to read the "Nutritional Facts" panels to help us eat healthy.  In the decade since the government first began developing uniform labels to spell out a food's calories, fat, cholesterol, carbohydrates and protein, we have come to rely on the numbers when deciding what to buy and eat.  But little is done to keep food makers honest.  Florida is one of the only states that tests food products to see whether the contents match the statements on the label. When the state finds offenders, it often does no more than send a letter of complaint. At times, that results in a revised label.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last surveyed nutritional labels five years ago. It found inaccuracies in one of every 10 products - and called that an excellent result.  With hundreds of thousands of products on the shelves, that means tens of thousands of those could be misleading consumers.

In general, a food company's claims have to be wrong by more than 30 percent to fail tests for nutrition content.  Federal law allows most products a 20 percent variance from the label; a product that says it has 200 calories can legally have 240. A cereal said to contain 10 grams of fiber would be OK even if it really had 8 grams.  In addition, government food labs will account for a margin of error in testing of up to 10 percent.  State Sen. Steven Geller, a Democrat, has been on a quest for several months to find out whether low-carbohydrate products are truly that.

"If you have a discrepancy of 3 grams versus 4 grams, that can be a variation from one batch to the next," he said. "If you have 2 1/2 grams versus 25 grams, and they charge a lot more for it, how can that be accidental?"

Geller, who chairs the Agriculture and Consumer Services Committee and is an attorney, has asked the state lab to test foods in numerous South Florida Stores.  "If you make claims in writing, which are essentially a warranty, and they are far off from the claims, I think you impute fraud," Geller said. "I want them to clean up their act. If they don't want to clean up their act, I want them gone."

Joanne Brown, bureau chief of the state food lab, said she has stopped being surprised by what she finds.  "Since we've been doing some of these on and off for the last two years, some of their claims are just ridiculous," she said. "As far as the carbs and some of the claims as far as no sugar, when you taste what they taste like, they can't be."

"It's absolutely essential that those labels be accurate," said Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.