The 10 Sneakiest Tricks Most Food Manufacturers Play On Us

Trick #10: Confusing Names, Synonyms, and/or Acronyms on the Label.

The trick: If a certain substance becomes regarded as unhealthy or faces bad publicity, manufacturers won’t want it listed on their ingredients list. Instead of switching to a healthier ingredient, they just disguise the name to throw you off track.

How to spot it: You actually have to analyze the ingredient list and make sure you know what each ingredient is.

Worst offender: There are so many good examples, I can’t narrow it down to one. So here are a few…

“Splenda” was big until certain people got the idea that artificial sweeteners were bad. So it was still used, but listed as “sucralose” on the label. A lot of people hear “MSG is bad for you” but if they saw “Monosodium glutamate” on a label, would they notice?

I got tricked with a drink called Press Cocktail Soda. Instead of listing “high fructose corn syrup” on the list, they put “42 HFCS” on there, which is just a different form of HFCS. Since the ingredients were written in white on a shiny silver skinny can, I totally missed it.

Even Gatorade did this. They used “glucose-fructose syrup” on the label back when I was just a newbie in the sports drink world. Trusting Gatorade, I thought that fancy terminology meant I was getting some high-tech, nutritious formula! Eventually they had to tell the truth, which is why you now see “high fructose corn syrup” on the label.

What to do: Study up on your terminology so you can figure this out on the fly.

It’s like how detectives need to be able to think like criminals in order to solve a crime. You need to think like a greedy food corporation and figure out the best disguises for unhealthy ingredients.

But once you know the tricks, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be fooled by any unscrupulous manufacturers and their claims!

Finally, to improve your diet even further, discover the 5 Foods You Should Completely Eliminate from Your Diet!