Too Much Information on Products Healthy Confuses Consumers
People are confused when it comes to incorporate healthy habits into your life because of the contradiction of the messages that warn of their adverse effects and that encourage their implementation.
Good thing the doctors say that drinking wine with dinner stimulates the circulatory system! But beware; the same daily intake may cause heart disease, say others. Well, at least you can enjoy some chocolate afterwards, it also increases circulation not only the body but the brain as well. But wait! It contains a few food items and lots of sugar and fat. Nothing happens. To burn the fat, go to the gym, but be careful with the weights because they might hurt your back … If you really want to have a healthier life, why is it so difficult to obtain clear information? How can you come to understand as much data?
Robert F. Dyer, an expert in marketing and consumerism at the University of George Washington, and Jose Miguel Perea, nutritionist and professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, blamed on a flood of information. And, Perea, this, combined with other factors such as the interests of private companies that produce many of the data that make the news and the tendency of people to want everything easy, do we lose ourselves in finding information reliable.
The popular desire to have a miracle product or a magic formula distorts the right idea of what defines a good diet. “The difficulty is that as everything is mediated by advertising, makes [the idea] to warp,” says Perea. “The industry is trying to give an idea of a good diet is achieved with a product. Not so. The set of products to take what makes a person eat well or eat badly.” Dyer agrees that a balance is needed. “In a few cases [a product] will be a total success,” he says.
Ironically, it seems that the simplicity of a healthy diet bores people, which, according to Perea, want something more interesting. “To say that you have to eat beans, rice, salad, some bread, a dessert of fruit and such commodities are not spectacular does not call attention to the press,” he says.
But how will consumers find the lost direction when it is so easy to exaggerate the facts? Perea gives an example of how companies manipulate advertising to draw conclusions that scientists cannot do anything. He worked with an organization that wanted to see if it was possible to maintain a balanced diet while beer was consumed, which was proven. However, the results were not explained that way. “It is quite true,” said Perea, “but of course if you then say it’s the beer that makes the diet is balanced … we are confusing”.
Fortunately, the new Regulation 1924/2006 is running with such nuances, but slowly. This law, according to the magazine of the National Retail & Consumer Mercasa, requires that the advertising of a food that can be interpreted as a nutrition need to meet certain requirements: not be false, ambiguous or misleading, no doubt lead to or encourage excessive consumption, and avoid references to bodily changes. In addition, the statements are only allowed to refer to digestible nutrients in substantial numbers and whose qualities can be understood by the average consumer.
Is there anything else we can do to protect the continued distortion? Perea proposes arm ourselves with information from children. “In philosophical plan say that what is missing is basic education.”
Moderate information as part of a subject in schools help children, says, because they give an education that will allow for greater choice later.
And of course you cannot forget that one of the most important resources we have in life. “What prevails in all this is moderation and common sense. I think this is far,” notes Perea.