Nine front of pack phrases that mean less than you think

Five of these nine front of pack phrases carry a legal condition in Great Britain, and even those promise less than they sound. The other four, natural, wholegrain, plant based and gut friendly, have no threshold to meet at all. The evidence is on the back: the nutrition panel per 100g and the ingredients list.

The front of a pack is a design decision. Nobody is lying to you on it, as a rule, but the words have been chosen to sell, and a few of them were chosen because they sound like more than they are.

Which front of pack phrases have a legal meaning?

Most of the legal lines below come from the list of permitted nutrition claims in Regulation 1924/2006, which still applies in Great Britain and is published as one sheet of the government’s claims register. The fruit percentage comes from the main food labelling regulation.

What does no added sugar mean on a label?

It means no sugars, and no other food used for its sweetness, went in during manufacture. It does not mean the food is low in sugar.

If sugars are present naturally, the pack has to carry the words contains naturally occurring sugars. A fruit bar or a yoghurt can be honest on both counts and still show a high sugars figure, because the milk and the fruit brought their own. Fruit that has been juiced or puréed is the bit worth watching. On the NHS definition, sugars from juice, smoothies and purées count as free sugars, the kind adults are advised to keep under 30g a day, even when nothing else was added.

Is reduced sugar the same as low sugar?

No. Low sugar has a ceiling, 5g of sugars per 100g of food or 2.5g per 100ml of a drink. Reduced has no ceiling at all, only a comparison: at least 30 per cent less than similar products (25 per cent for salt).

Take a cereal that drops from 40g of sugars per 100g to 28g. It can print reduced sugar on the front, and 28g is still red on a traffic light label, where high starts above 22.5g. The government’s guidance to manufacturers says the comparison should be made against two or more foods of the same category, so the 30 per cent is measured against the shelf, not against your idea of a healthy breakfast.

Light and lite follow the same rule as reduced, and the pack has to say what makes the food light. A light crisp might be lower in fat and no lower in salt. Fat free is tighter, no more than 0.5g of fat per 100g or 100ml, and the rules ban claims written as a percentage fat free. If you see a big number followed by fat free, it is worth a second look.

Does natural mean anything on food packaging?

Not on its own. Natural turns up in the claims rules only as a prefix: if a food meets a claim’s condition naturally, it can say naturally high in fibre or naturally low in fat. Natural by itself is not among the permitted nutrition claims.

What does still apply is the general rule that food information must not mislead. That rule specifically covers suggesting a food has special characteristics when all similar foods have them, in particular by making a point of what is or isn’t in it. A pack shouting about the absence of something its whole category never contains is the exact thing that rule describes.

Is wholegrain or multigrain a legal term?

Neither is a permitted nutrition claim, so neither has a number behind it. A multigrain loaf can be mostly white flour with some seeds on top.

Wholemeal on a loaf is the exception. In Great Britain, wholemeal can only go in the name of a bread when all the flour used to make it is wholemeal. That bread naming rule covers wholemeal and wheat germ. It says nothing about multigrain, brown or malted. For any of those, the fibre per 100g tells you more than the name does, and the high fibre and source of fibre thresholds give you the two numbers to hold it against.

What does made with real fruit have to tell you?

How much. When an ingredient is emphasised on the label in words, pictures or graphics, the law requires its quantity, as a percentage of what went into the mix. The percentage has to appear in or next to the name of the food, or in the ingredients list beside that ingredient.

So the strawberries on the front will usually have a number somewhere on the back, with a few narrow exceptions such as an ingredient used in small amounts for flavour. Find it before you believe the photograph. The same rule applies when an ingredient appears in the name of the food itself.

Does plant based or high protein mean healthier?

Plant based is not a permitted nutrition claim. It tells you what the food is made from and nothing about its sugar, salt, fat or fibre, so read the panel as you would for anything else.

High protein does have a line: at least 20 per cent of the food’s energy has to come from protein, and source of protein needs 12 per cent. Whether you need more protein is another question. On average, people in the UK already eat more than enough, and the British Nutrition Foundation’s view is that we don’t need extra from products with added protein. A high protein bar meets one condition and is silent on everything else in it.

What about gut friendly?

It is not an authorised claim in Great Britain. The phrase does appear in the government’s register, inside an application for a mix of lactic acid bacteria, and the whole entry is recorded as not authorised. Under Article 10 of the claims regulation, a vague benefit line is only allowed when a specific authorised health claim sits beside it. I’ve written about what that means in the aisle in what gut friendly means on a UK food label.

What should you check on the back instead?

Turn the pack over and use the per 100g column, because the company chooses the portion and it can’t choose what 100g is. Hold sugars against 5 and 22.5, salt against 0.3 and 1.5, and fibre against 3 and 6. Then read the first few ingredients, which are the heaviest; how to read an ingredients list goes through what the order tells you.

If you want to find out how many of these you would have caught in the shop, the label test is six true or false questions and takes about two minutes.