How To Identify And Avoid Deceptive 'Health Halos' When Grocery Shopping

Advertising is a deceptive game, and the food industry is not immune to it. The latest food-advertising phenomena that has consumers fooled? Health halos. Health halo foods highlight one or a few trustworthy qualities or ingredients on the packaging, giving the food the overall appearance that it is healthy, thereby creating a halo effect. Common buzzwords that generate the health halo effect around foods include gluten-free, organic, non-GMO, and natural. Words such as these are branding techniques, tricking your brain into thinking that because the food is — for example — organic, it must have high nutrition.

If you're now questioning every choice you've ever made at the grocery store, you're not alone. However, there are ways to avoid falling for the food industry's tricks. Reading the nutrition facts panel and ingredient list of any purchased food is essential, and making sure your grocery cart is filled with colorful ingredients like bold fruits and vegetables aids heavily as well. Shopping hacks like the 3-3-2-2-1 method can help you create balanced meals without getting distracted by health halos.

Before we go any further, there are two important things to note. First, there is no such thing as bad or even good foods — only foods that have higher or lower nutritional value than others. Second, individual foods contribute differently to the overall nutritional balance in your diet. Health halo foods are in their own right neither solely healthy nor unhealthy, but because of the deceptive advertising, they may distract you from reading the full nutrition facts panel and thus lead you to choose foods with insufficient nutritional value.

There are many buzzwords associated with health halos, and like the name suggests, they are all relatively deceptive. Gluten-free is a common example because it is often coupled with being healthy. However, to supplement the lack of gluten, many food producers add sodium, sugar, or saturated fat to preserve a quality flavor. Organic is another major health halo. The main difference between organic ingredients and their counterparts is the farming practice used to produce them. Yet the farming technique used for different foods has little effect on their nutritional value — organic products may only have fewer chemical residues than paralleling products. 

Many people wrongly equate organic with non-GMO, yet there is a key difference between the two terms. While both are health halos, organic foods by definition do not contain genetic modifications, yet a non-GMO food isn't necessarily organic. Non-GMOs aren't altered in an unnatural manner, meaning they don't have genetic modifications. Lastly, natural is a mainstay in health halo foods. Simply meaning existing in nature, natural could describe many naturally-occurring ingredients that are not always healthy. Sugar, naturally-derived from the cane plant, is a prime example of this. Therefore, thoroughly read the nutrition facts panel and ingredients to ensure you are intaking a balance of nutritional elements.