Labels
And their impact
22nd of July 2025
This is not a post about the labels we give each other and ourselves. That’s a whole other issue. Today I just want to talk about the labels we meet on food in the store. The informative labels about dolphin free tuna or fairtrade sugar. In the Netherlands we have started with a label called the nutrition score. Now that’s a whole new can of tuna free fish (or so we’re told). What do these labels really mean? Who backs these labels? How much do you trust these labels? And what do these labels really accomplish? These are all questions I started asking myself lately. And today I’m going to keep digging and share with you what I’ve found so far.
What do these labels mean?
There are many labels on food. Informing us about the wellbeing of animals, the fairness in wages and the impact on the environment and many other things. There is labels to inform us that fish were only kind of harmed or that animals had some comfort in their short sad lives. And that a farmer was given a bare minimum for his chocolate. I know I’m coming of a bit sarcastic and I am because I have a fundamental problem with these label practices. More on that later. In short, these labels are supposed to tell us all sort of things. We can reference their backing, demands and commitment on various websites such as https://www.keurmerkenwijzer.nl/. Like I said before there is also another label informing us about the nutritional score of food. I’m going to start a new paragraph because while I was fascinated that my chips were healthier than a muesli bar I found out fun fact about this confusing label. (Spoiler: my chips were not healthier than the muesli bar).
Nutriscore label
This one has been confusing me for a while until we finally checked it out. In short food gets a score from A to D, A being healthiest D being… well not healthy. This would help people make healthier choices. Now, when I first saw this label, I thought: “Well, that is handy and informative. I’m curious which items are best and worst”. Obviously, a bag of fresh lettuce was A and a bar of Chocolate was D. This made sense, but why were chips B? Were they healthier than I thought? This couldn’t be! They are potato + salt + fat… even though the potato in my book is not a food that deserves to be seen as “unhealthy” on its own, you can use it to make food well... fattening.
Then Marco came home with a chocolate muesli bar… D. Okay, so chocolate really, really bad… fine… but fat and salt also bad. So, I looked it up. What was going on here? It turns out. To make it slightly useful and not fun or extremely informative to me: the labels are grouped in categories. I can understand its benefits but since them being in categories wasn’t apparent to me (and many others I have spoken to since) at all, it isn’t very clear what the categories are. Back to google we go. Now I have read most of the seemingly important stuff on this page:
RIVM NutriscoreAnd besides France being oh so special again it still only seems to refer to a product in it’s group so I’ll never know if my chocolate muesli bars are a better choice than salted chips. In my opinion only marginally helpful. I know which chips are healthier than others but to be honest I’m not buying chips or chocolate as a health food; it doesn’t really factor in my choice. Yumminess does. But whether it’s healthy… no. If I wanted healthy, I’d eat the bag of lettuce and trust me that is no fun during a movie night. You show up with a bag of lettuce instead of chips and you’re not making friends.
Who backs these labels?
Now we looked at two different types of labels. The informative guilt trip one and the “informative” health nut one. But who is behind these labels? Who checks if the people that use these comply with the standards? Well, I’ve noticed it differs. And most are checked by independent organizations. In the previous links you can find how trustworthy they are which brings us to my next and last point.
How much do we trust these labels and therefore what do they accomplish?
To continue where I left off in the last point, a website tells me these labels are trustworthy or not. But how can I be sure to trust the website? That has become a great issue in the past years and maybe an interesting thing to investigate in the future. However, what I hear is that most people have lost their trust in organizations. Be them charity or informative non-profit or the government or just any for profit company there is very little trust. Clearly because we don’t believe anything is non-profit. You hear stories about high paid CEO’s and budgets being spent on expensive buildings instead of the direct cause they were donated to. When I saw that “fairtrade sugar” was being removed from the sugar aisle because it was going out of the store’s assortment, I laughed with tears of sadness in my eyes. But on the other hand, why is it my responsibility to make sure a farmer gets paid fairly. Why isn’t there just a law to keep companies from exploiting these people. Which might keep me from having a moral and financial conundrum in the grocery store.
What is your opinion? Any thoughts? Let me know on the comment section on Facebook. Thank you for reading!
