Forget frightening Halloween costumes and horror movies,
some truly scary
news is that the labels on some nutrition bars may
under-report certain ingredient quantities.
ConsumerLab.com, a commercial testing company, claims that
some ingredients, including
carbohydrates, sodium and saturated fats, may exceed the
quantity stated on some nutrition
bars' labels.
ConsumerLab.com licenses its "Seal of Approved
Quality" to companies whose products pass
testing and want to pay for the seal to appear on their
products. "We found that 60 percent of the
bars we tested did not meet their label claims," said
Tod Cooperman, president of
ConsumerLab.com, in an interview with Reuters Health. To
perform the testing, ConsumerLab.com
bought 30 nutrition bars (marketed as protein bars, meal
replacements bars, diet bars and energy
bars) and analyzed each for levels of calories, fats,
carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, cholesterol
and sodium. The company tested one sample of each product,
and if a bar failed the first round of
tests, it was tested a second time before receiving an
official fail rating.
According to Cooperman, 18 of the 30 bars' ingredients did
not agree with the levels of ingredients
listed on their labels. "Fifteen of the bars had more
carbohydrates than stated on the label, with some
of the bars having as much as 20 grams more carbohydrates
than the label indicated. And several of
these products were labeled Ôlow carb,'" says
Cooperman. A possible explanation for the discrepancy,
says Cooperman, is that some manufacturers exclude glycerin
from the final carbohydrate tally, while
the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that
glycerin be counted as a carbohydrate on labels.
Among the other findings were that some of the bars' sodium
and saturated fat levels were as much as
two to three times the levels listed on the labels, and many
bars contained an average of 8 more grams
of sugar than listed on the labels. Cooperman did point out
that, generally, protein, cholesterol and
calorie amounts were accurately labeled on the bars.
ConsumerLab.com's findings and testing
procedures drew criticism from the National Nutritional
Foods Association (NNFA), a group that
represents some nutrition bar manufacturers. "This
style of testing should only serve as a starting point
for the proper collection and evaluation of additional
samples," Philip Harvey, chief science officer for the
NNFA told Reuters Health. "What we would consider
proper is the testing of a minimum of three samples.
Keep in mind that the FDA requires [the testing of] 12
samples to arrive at a statistically valid conclusion.
" In responding to the mislabeling of carbohydrates on
bars, an NNFA attorney said that "manufacturers
thought that not including glycerin in the carbohydrate
count made sense, since, if their science showed it
isn't always metabolized like a carb, why treat it like one?
However, when NNFA and several
manufacturers presented their case to the FDA, the agency disagreed.