Kelly Garton

But they're there to change the sensory experience.

So something might be, you know, colored with a beetroot extract or something.

And you think, oh, well, that's fine because it's just beetroot.

But if you think about all of these sort of subconscious, you know, biological signals that your body is getting when you see a product that's bright red, that's been dyed by beetroot, you know, you realize that this is still quite misleading.

And these natural colors and flavors really could be anything that's derived from a plant or animal source.

So I would love to see, you know, better rules and restrictions around what can be labeled that way.

We also tend to see like other claims that gives products sort of like.

Health halo effects.

So, you know, something might be might be labeled as low fat or sugar free or vitamin enriched.

But if it's sugar free, it could be full of artificial sweeteners, probably is full of artificial sweeteners that are still kind of.

playing into your body's sensory receptors.

And we don't have a lot of evidence on the health impacts of those artificial sweeteners in the long term.

You know, something, an ultra processed food could be labeled vitamin enriched just by, you know, putting something in at the end of the processing stage, but that doesn't mean it's going to be healthy.

So it's, yeah, these kinds of things are known for playing on our desire to, you know, make healthy choices.

And especially when we're choosing food for kids, you know, you might see

a claim that a product gives the nutrients your child needs to grow, but that might be completely unsubstantiated, but maybe they've added a little bit of a vitamin here and then they make that claim.

Yeah, and they really do give this illusion of value for money, right?

And it's things like production methods, they rely on

Cheap commodities and processing methods that really drive down production costs and transport costs, they help drive down prices.

So, right, that gives us a perception of getting more value for money.