Supermarket Circulars Promoting the Sales of ‘Healthy’ Foods: Analysis Based on Degree of Processing

Abstract

The health and wellness food sector grew 98% from 2009 to 2014 in Brazil, the world’s fourth-biggest market. The trend has reached supermarket circulars, which recently started to feature whole sections advertising health and wellness-enhancing foods. This study identified food items advertised in circulars’ specific sections of two Brazilian supermarket chains (one regional, one national) during a 10-week period. Foods were classified according to degree of food processing and presence/type of claims on their front-of-pack (FoP) labels. Comparison between groups of Unprocessed/Minimally Processed foods vs. Ultra-processed foods and presence/type of claims employed Pearson chi-square test. From the 434 alleged health and wellness-enhancing foods advertised, around half (51.4%) were classified as Ultra-processed. Presence of reduced and increased nutrient-content claims was significantly higher in labels of Ultra-processed foods. Most frequent claims addressed sugar and fibre content. Brazilian supermarket circulars were found to be promoting the sale of Ultra-processed foods in their health and wellness sections, leading to a situation that can mislead the consumer and bring negative health outcomes.

Decision flowchart for food classification by the extension and purpose of industrial processing: update and practical application

“…To systematise and standardise the process of classification by the extension and purpose of industrial processing, a decision flowchart was developed based on documents about the NOVA classification that were published until 2016 [4,7,16,18]. The flowchart gathers the information contained in these publications and has been used in previous studies on food choices in supermarkets and on the items advertised in the health-related sections of supermarket circulars [18,19]. Additional criteria to classify food according to NOVA are presented in a 2019 publication [17].…”

Detection of chicken DNA in commercial dog foods

“…Nowadays, all consumer trends are moving towards healthier and more natural food options. Population growth generates an increasing demand for food, which leads to an increase in the production of processed food [2]. Therefore, governmental and official agencies must enforce guaranteed compliance with food labeling, nutritional quality and food origin, as well as the perception of health and diet claims in order to avoid false declarations of food producers.…”

Selected Instrumental Techniques Applied in Food and Feed: Quality, Safety and Adulteration Analysis

“…As environment and behavior evolve, they will modify food consumption practices [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. While consumer trends nowadays gravitate toward healthier [ 5 ] and natural [ 6 ] food options, an increase in population and high food demand tend to increase the production of processed foods [ 7 , 8 ]. Government and official agencies, then, must concern themselves with enforcing guaranteed food labeling compliance, nutritional quality, and food origin (see, for example, [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]), as well as the public perception of health and dietary declarations (see, for instance, [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ] to avoid unfair trade [ 17 ].…”