Are Smart Choices Food Labels A Waste of Space?

I'd like to see NO information. I always look at the nutrition facts and ingredients before buying. My diet has usually been weird enough (I was low-carb for three years) that any kind of labeling is generally useless.

Any information that does something other than state facts, i.e. a product contains certain amounts of calories, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, etc., is useless. Anything else will only be based on the prevailing dietary belief of the moment. That makes the information pretty pointless.

Even the things included on the nutrition labels are leading: only saturated fat is required to be listed, sodium is listed but not potassium, calcium but not magnesium, etc. I've lately become convinced that food manufacturers use labels to make us feel better about the crap we eat.

I don't eat many foods with labels, either. Most of these labeling systems would apply mostly to processed foods like those frozen entrees, cereals, snacks, beverages, etc. I think the traffic-light system is at least a little bit better than the Smart Choice system, since it would tell you which nutrients certain foods are high/low in. But ultimately, you should be sticking to whole foods...there's nothing in say, spinach, that requires a warning sign.

I wrote about this on my blog yesterday & how the Smart Choice program is suspended for now. I am also a more whole foods person BUT there are healthy breads & cereals I buy & my hubby eats differently than me so I am a label reader... even for Greek yogurt & things like that. BUT, no, a label does not mean I buy it. I read the nutritional facts & the ingredients & make my decision based on that, not some check on a box.

Two things bug me about this:

1) My definition of "healthy" is going to conflict with whatever rating system they come up with because you know it's going to demonize saturated fat. Sat fat is not the enemy.

2) As we've seen from the posts above, people who really care about what goes into their bodies are going to take the time to read and understand the nutrition labels and not rely on these silly visual aids to make their food selections. So who are they making these labels for? People who don't care to know that much about the food going into their body. The FDA will essentially be creating a system for people who are going to ignore it anyway. Great use of my tax dollars FDA. Argh!

Ideally you'd want to stick with foods that have little to no labels. I.e., fresh meats, fruits, veggies. Of course, we live in the real world where the majority of food isn't consumed this way.