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Cholesterol food labeling.

Alex333

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Cholesterol in blood has nothing to do with dietary cholesterol. It's representativeness bias.
These US government dietary guidelines (page 76) suggests it is safe to consume <300 mg (a little bit more that in 1 egg) of dietary cholesterol a day.

Many company are advertising 0% cholesterol food. Starbucks sells egg-whites spinach wraps. Grocery stores have egg whites only products.

Are companies scientifically illiterate? Are consumers falling into representativeness bias ("dietary cholesterol raise blood level cholesterol")?
 
You could not sell any floor wax to Americans if you told them it had cholesterol in it.

So yeah, I vote "scientific illiteracy" to the companies's advantage.

Though I do not believe the cholesterol/CAD link. My recent reading told me that the cholesterol in your artery clogs is left over from artery wall cells that died, NOT a build up directly from the blood. HDL is supposed to scavenge that detritus out of the arteries. So, high HDL is much more important than low LDL.
 
The problem is that many American don't know what to buy. Cholesterol-Free potato chips was my favorite. The NLEA (of 1990?) helped end a lot of that nonsense.
 
Alex333 said:
Are companies scientifically illiterate?
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No, they're simply catering to their customers. If their customers believe cholesterol in food is bad, companies will sell them low-cholesterol food. Whether the companies and the people running share the belief is ultimately irrelevant.

Are consumers falling into representativeness bias ("dietary cholesterol raise blood level cholesterol")?
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No, they're simply believing what they're told. The vast majority have absolutely no idea what any research might say, so they don't even have enough data to fall for any bias about it. Someone in a position of authority told them cholesterol in food is bad, so they try to avoid it. That said authority may have been wrong is an entirely different problem.

Of course, there's also something of a self-sustaining vicious circle going on here. Companies cater to the beliefs of their customers, but those beliefs are based on the statements of perceived authorities, which to some extent includes the companies they're buying things from. So companies sell low cholesterol food because their customers buy it, and their customers buy it because they see companies selling it and assume there must be a good reason for that. Even if the authority that originally kicked things off recants, the belief from consumers and consequent satisfying of the demand by companies is perfectly capable of sustaining itself.
 
Alex333 said:
So educating companies may break vicious circle.
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No, the companies have absolutely no interest in whether their labelling is relevant. If it was found that consumers preferentially bought food labelled "Guaranteed no added plutonium", companies would scramble to add that label to their products even though they know perfectly well that the label is meaningless because there is no food that does have it added. Companies are, pretty much by definition, in it for the money. It doesn't matter what they know, it just matters how they think they can make the most profit. There are limits of course - companies are generally prevented by law from actively lying, for example. But strict government regulation of any and all product labelling is not a particularly popular proposition, so getting rid of true but meaningless labels is not likely to ever happen.

The people who actually need educating are the consumers, but that's not easy either. A large part of the problem is that they are already educated - they didn't all just wake up one day and decide cholesterol in food is bad, someone told them that. Just telling them the opposite won't really achieve much. For example, there's already plenty of information available saying taking vitamins is pointless for most people if you're not suffering from some deficiency, but the idea that vitamins are good is ingrained enough that even those who accept the newer information often figure to take pills "just in case". It will be exactly the same for cholesterol - even if you convince some people that it's not bad to eat, many of them will continue to avoid it just in case the older advice turns out to be correct after all. Throw in all the people who will never see the new advice, who won't believe it, or who are misled by the huge amount of quackery around the food and dieting industries and actually getting a significant proportion of people to accept the latest and best science is far from and easy proposition.
 
Cuddles said:
No, the companies have absolutely no interest in whether their labelling is relevant. If it was found that consumers preferentially bought food labelled "Guaranteed no added plutonium", companies would scramble to add that label to their products even though they know perfectly well that the label is meaningless because there is no food that does have it added. Companies are, pretty much by definition, in it for the money. It doesn't matter what they know, it just matters how they think they can make the most profit. There are limits of course - companies are generally prevented by law from actively lying, for example. But strict government regulation of any and all product labelling is not a particularly popular proposition, so getting rid of true but meaningless labels is not likely to ever happen.

The people who actually need educating are the consumers, but that's not easy either. A large part of the problem is that they are already educated - they didn't all just wake up one day and decide cholesterol in food is bad, someone told them that. Just telling them the opposite won't really achieve much. For example, there's already plenty of information available saying taking vitamins is pointless for most people if you're not suffering from some deficiency, but the idea that vitamins are good is ingrained enough that even those who accept the newer information often figure to take pills "just in case". It will be exactly the same for cholesterol - even if you convince some people that it's not bad to eat, many of them will continue to avoid it just in case the older advice turns out to be correct after all. Throw in all the people who will never see the new advice, who won't believe it, or who are misled by the huge amount of quackery around the food and dieting industries and actually getting a significant proportion of people to accept the latest and best science is far from and easy proposition.
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Yup, and the first company which says "No added Plutonium guaranteed !" may also imply that some of its competitors' products might.
 
Studies suggested that saturated fat cause of high cholesterol levels. Why don't companies build customer's trust by putting the "Low saturated fat" label instead of cholesterol one? It's at least be scientifically true and helps customers to make better choices.
 
I've not really noticed much advertising based on low cholesterol recently. I've seen some spreads which claim to have cholesterol reducing properties, but that's a different thing.
 
Alex333 said:
Studies suggested that saturated fat cause of high cholesterol levels. Why don't companies build customer's trust by putting the "Low saturated fat" label instead of cholesterol one? It's at least be scientifically true and helps customers to make better choices.
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I can't recall ever seeing any food actually labelled as being low in cholesterol, but I've seen plenty that makes claims about being low in saturated fat. The problem comes with your "instead". Why would they do just one when they can easily do both? Low fat, low cholesterol, high in fibre, low salt, no added sugar, all natural preservatives, non-hydrogenated, gluten free, free-range, organic, genuinely British, low in plutonium and asbestos, etc., etc.. As long as there's space on the packaging, they will claim anything and everything they think will make their product sound more attractive to consumers.

Again, there's really no point in going after the companies here. They simply have no incentive to educate their customers; that's not the business they're in. If you want to educate consumers to look for and demand sensible labelling, you need to actually educate consumers, not educate someone else and hope it trickles down to them.
 
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