This post came to me the other day because I was looking at my pancake box while I was cooking. The first thing I notice was the Heart Healthy symbol indicating all the health facts about this pancake mix. According to the label, this pancake mix promotes a good source of fiber, cholesterol free and low on fat. For this same reason, I chose this brand over the generic.

I wondered if the food label in the pancake mix was done as a marketing scheme or if actually holds up to the label. My first thought then was to compare my pancake box to my roommate’s box nutritional facts label. The first thing I checked in the nutritional facts label was the number of servings each pancake mix. My box has twelve serving witch is 1/2 cup mix equivalent to 200 calories. The generic brand has 23 servings with a serving size of 1/3rd for 140 calories. Then I looked at the total fat for each box and the generic box had 1gram of fat compared to my box which has 1.5 grams of fat. I went down the line and noticed the generic brand was actually “healthier” compared to my pancake box.

This made me question if more products with food labels aren’t actually promoting what they’re saying. I looked up articles and I found one which said, “food labels don’t work! Study after study shows that labels have failed to promote even modest dietary improvements”.  To which I believe because families are buying products that promote health benefits in their product but in reality, it’s just another form of marketing.