The 10 Sneakiest Tricks Most Food Manufacturers Play On Us

Being a food manufacturer is tricky these days. These companies need to use the cheapest possible ingredients to maintain their profit margins, but what they put into the product goes under intense scrutiny by today’s health-conscious consumers.

Problem is, healthy ingredients are expensive. Taboo ingredients, such as partially hydrogenated oils and saturated fats, are cheap. So how does the manufacturer handle these tricky situations?

They pass the tricks onto the consumer, of course!

So every time we shop, we have to be vigilant about what we’re getting, because there’s always someone trying to pull one over on us. That’s why I compiled a list of tricks that most companies play on us:

Trick #1: “0 grams” of Unhealthy Ingredients

The trick: Foods are labeled as containing “0g trans fat” or “0g saturated fat” per serving.

Unfortunately, “0″ does not mean 0. It actually means “up to 0.5″ grams per serving. So if you consume two servings of some “0g trans fats” snacks, you could be ingesting up to 1g of trans fats. (And no one eats just one or two servings…)

Heck, even the words “fat free” on the label allow up to 0.5g fat per serving.

How to spot it: Foods that are actually healthy don’t need to bother claiming “0g trans fats.” So if you see a bag of chips with a big “0g trans fats” badge right on front, they are probably pulling this trick.

Worst offender: Frito Lay snacks, such as Cheetos. Frito Lay takes pride in the fact that they were the first major food company to remove trans fats from their snack chips, and I applaud them for taking the initiative, but it doesn’t mean their snacks are healthy.

What to do: Skip past the Nutrition Facts label and peruse the ingredients. If the ingredients list contains any type of hydrogenated oils, partially hydrogenated soybean oil for instance, then the product contains trans fats, no matter how big the “0g trans fats” badge is.

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