BAR FIGHT: Popular/Lucrative Snack Bars Come Under Fire

CORNUCOPIA, Wis., Dec. 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new report, Raising the Bar, Choosing Healthy Snack Bars versus Gimmicky Junk Food, and its accompanying scorecard expose misleading marketing practices by food industry giants that market candy-like snack and energy bars as wholesome and nutritious.

The report details how snack bar quality varies widely among brands, even among the many brands that market themselves as "made with" organic ingredients. It further exposes USDA National Organic Program regulation loopholes allowing use of conventional, hexane-extracted ingredients in "made with" organic products.

Issued by The Cornucopia Institute, a national food and farm policy research group, the report further exposes leading natural/organic brands for including cheap, conventional ingredients instead of creating products that qualify for the USDA organic label.

"The highly profitable snack bar industry is rife with gimmicky substitutes, such as protein isolates, sweetener syrups, and flours, instead of whole food ingredients," says the report's lead author, Linley Dixon, PhD, Cornucopia's chief scientist.

"With the exception of certified organic bars, many products add protein isolates processed with the neurotoxin solvent hexane, a byproduct of the gasoline refinement industry," added Dixon. "Hexane-extracted ingredients, like conventional soy protein isolate, are common in products that are labeled 'made with' organic ingredients. An intentional loophole in the USDA organic standards allows use of ingredients that are extracted using volatile solvents in 'made with' organic products (a process explicitly prohibited in products qualifying to display the USDA organic logo)."

Raising the Bar also explains how, in many other ways, consumers find safer and higher-quality products in USDA certified organic brands over conventional, mass-market brands that contain long ingredient lists including questionable gums and synthetic preservatives, colors, or flavors.

"There is so much competition for market share in the snack bar industry that many brands promoting themselves as 'natural' or 'organic' still cut corners for ingredient sourcing to achieve a lower price point," stated Goldie Caughlan, a former National Organic Standards Board member and nutrition educator at the Seattle-based PCC Community Markets. "That's why it's important to make sure the product has the USDA Organic seal and not just the 'made with' organic ingredients label."

Discriminating shoppers now have a new mobile-friendly, web-based tool to separate the best bars from greenwashed marketing hype. 

View full release: https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/12/new-report-exposes-deceptive-marketing-9-billion-dollar-snack-bar-industry/ 

Contact: Dr. Linley Dixon, (970) 317-0309

SOURCE The Cornucopia Institute

Related Links

https://www.cornucopia.org