Whole grain labels on cereal, bread, and crackers are confusing to consumers and could cause them to make fewer healthy choices, according to the results of a study that tested whether people are able pick out the healthier, whole grain option based on food package labels.
The study was led by researchers at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and NYU School of Global Public Health and published in Public Health Nutrition.
They surveyed 1,030 U.S. adults, representative of the population, with photos of both hypothetical and real products.
The photos showed the products, with various whole grain labels on the front of the package, along with the nutrition facts label and ingredients list for each product.
Participants were asked to identify the healthier option (for the hypothetical products) or assess the whole grain content (for the real products).
For the hypothetical products, 29-47% of respondents answered incorrectly (specifically, 31% incorrectly for cereal, 29-37% for crackers, 47% for bread).
For real products that were not mostly composed of whole grains, 43-51% of respondents overstated the whole grain content (specifically, 41% overstated for multigrain crackers, 43% for honey wheat bread, and 51% for 12-grain bread).
Consumers more accurately stated the whole grain content for an oat cereal product that really was mostly composed of whole grain.
“Our study results show that many consumers cannot correctly identify the amount of whole grains or select a healthier whole grain product,” said first author Parke Wilde, a food economist and professor at the Friedman School.
“Manufacturers have many ways to persuade you that a product has whole grain even if it doesn’t. They can tell you it’s multigrain or they can color it brown, but those signals do not really indicate the whole grain content.”
The packages on the hypothetical products either had no front-of-package whole grain label or were marked with “multigrain”, “made with whole grains”, or a whole grain stamp.
The packages on the real products displayed the actual product markings, including “multigrain”, “honey wheat”, and “12 grain”.
The study goal was to assess whether consumer misunderstanding of the labels meets a legal standard for enhanced US labeling requirements for whole grain products.
The legal standard relates to deceptive advertising, and evidence that the labels are actually misleading—or likely to mislead—consumers can bolster support for regulations.
Previous research has shown disparities in whole grain intake in the US, including for example, lower intake for adolescents than for adults, and lower intake for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) than for higher-income non-participants.
The authors of the new study found that consumers who were younger, had less education, were Black or African American, or reported having difficulty understanding food labels were more likely to answer incorrectly in the test involving hypothetical products.
The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that half of all grains consumed should be whole grains.
Adequate intake of whole grains has been linked with reduced risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer.
“For consumers, it would be helpful if manufacturers reported what percentage of grain in a particular product is whole grain,” Wilde added.
“Without that information, the best clue to whole grain content is the ingredients list, which is ordered from highest to lowest weight.”
“Using the example of the two cracker boxes (above), the cracker image at left lists ‘whole wheat flour’ as the fourth ingredient, whereas the image at right lists ‘whole wheat flour’ as the fifth ingredient. Based on the order of ingredients, the crackers at left contain more whole grains.”
