Reaching for the "reduced fat" cream cheese or the "no added sugar" soda feels like the smarter grocery pick. New research suggests it often isn't.
A Cornell University team analyzed nearly 150,000 food and beverage products launched in the United States between 2015 and 2024.
About half carried a health-related claim on the front of the pack. Yet two-thirds of the same products fell into the less healthy category once their full nutritional makeup was scored.
The study, published September 24, 2026 in Nature Food, drew on new-product data from the market research firm Mintel.
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To grade each item, the researchers applied the Nutrient Profiling Model developed by the U.K. Food Standards Agency.
That model weighs sugar, sodium, saturated fat and calories against fiber, protein and fruit and vegetable content.
Why one claim can hide a bigger trade-off
The pattern the Cornell team kept finding was a swap. Manufacturers cut one problem ingredient and quietly added more of another.
Lower-fat cream cheese carried more total sugars and more sodium than the original.
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"Reduced sodium" sodas were disproportionately likely to lean on extra added sugar.
Packaged meals labeled "no trans fat" often contained more saturated fat and sodium than versions without the claim.
Beverages showed the widest gap of any category between what the front of the pack promised and what the nutrition label actually spelled out on the back.
"There are so many label claims on packages," said Pei Zhou, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell who co-led the analysis. "Our main question was whether products with claims are healthier than those without health claims."
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Across ten years and 145,609 products, the short answer was often no.
Where the label rule leaves a gap
US food label claims are checked one attribute at a time. A "low fat" claim has to be accurate about fat.
Nothing in that rule requires the same product to also be low in sodium or added sugar.
That gap is what the researchers want federal regulators to close. Their paper recommends shifting from single-nutrient claims toward whole-product nutrient profiling, the approach already used in Chile and Mexico, where front-of-pack warning labels flag high sugar, sodium and saturated fat.
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"The general idea is to transition from single claims to a broader nutrient profile style," said Miguel Gómez, the Cornell food marketing professor who led the study.
The FDA is inching in that direction. The agency finalized a new definition of the term "healthy" on food labels in December 2024, tying the claim to food groups from the Dietary Guidelines and to limits on added sugars, sodium and saturated fat.
Manufacturers have until February 25, 2028 to bring their labels into compliance.
What to check before you put it in the cart
Until that rule reaches the shelves, the fastest guardrail is the back of the box.
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The Nutrition Facts panel adds up the whole picture that a single front-of-pack claim leaves out.
It shows the added sugars, sodium, saturated fat and fiber for the actual serving you will eat.
For beverages, ingredient swaps show up most often. A "reduced sodium" or "no added sugar" line on a soda or flavored drink is worth checking against the back-label sugar and sodium figures for that serving, not taken at face value.
This article is made and published by Mie Hermansen, who may have used AI in the preparation.