When you’re shopping for groceries online, you’re likely missing out on crucial nutritional information. That’s because the law requiring these facts to be printed on food product labels is a few decades old, and doesn’t apply to anything you buy via the internet.
And companies aren’t voluntarily filling the void by ensuring their online products carry the same detailed nutrition labels as those in physical stores. In a study published recently in Public Health Nutrition, researchers assessed 10 different products sold by nine national online retailers found on average just a third of the items provided the nutritional and other details required in grocery stores – everything from allergens to ingredients.
The steady growth of online shopping exploded in the last two years into a major boom. Just a couple of months into the pandemic, four out of five American consumers had shopped online for groceries, up from about two in five pre-pandemic, according to one survey. Online grocery sales are projected to reach about a fifth of all grocery shopping by 2026. About 14 percent of shoppers bought items via their mobile devices, a figure that is expected to keep rising.
Federal law requires that certain information be listed on food product labels, including nutrition facts, allergen information, ingredient lists and, for fruit drinks, the percent juice.
In the recent study, researchers from the New York University School of Global Public Health and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University looked at the web pages of 10 common food products available from nine major grocery stores. The products – bread, cereal and juice – were chosen from three categories often bought by people receiving Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps. People receiving SNAP have been permitted to buy groceries online in most states since 2019.
To be considered readily available, the food product information had to be “present, conspicuous and legible,” which means visible in the image of the product or its text description, and legible without the need for any clicking, scrolling or magnification.
Regulations haven’t kept up with technology, the researchers found.
Nutritional facts weren’t readily available for most products. The information was obvious and legible, on average, only 36.5 percent of the time across all the products. The nutrition facts label and ingredients list were available on about half the products. Just 11 percent of the products containing allergenic ingredients had readily available allergy information.
The study didn’t include an analysis of the front of product packages, where marketing claims often appear and which is also regulated for in-store items.
‘Wild West’ of online food shopping
“The online food shopping environment today is a bit of a Wild West,” said one researcher.
And that’s concerning because it can make it harder for people shopping online to identify nutritionally beneficial items. Good nutrition is critical to overall health, particularly for concerns like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and obesity. Shoppers need to know what is and isn’t in their food, so they can make informed choices about what to feed themselves and their families. And shoppers rely on effective and accessible packaging to get that information.
For the health and safety of all consumers, the relevant regulations need to be updated.
To that end, the study also considered which agencies have authority in this area. The Food and Drug Administration regulates product labeling. The Federal Trade Commission regulates marketing and online sales to ensure they aren’t misleading or unfair.
The Department of Agriculture also has oversight, since it’s responsible for SNAP payments. SNAP recipients shop at designated retailers, and the USDA has the authority to require those companies to label food products properly if they’re to get this designation.
Huge numbers of people receive SNAP payments, about 41 million people in late 2021. Like other shoppers, too many of them are in the dark about the products they’re buying, forced to buy mystery foods because of outdated regulations. SNAP is also the largest federal assistance program, so any USDA requirement that applied to those stores would likely influence other manufacturers and retailers to label products more effectively.
Whether the agencies work together or independently, they must require companies to make this change. Shoppers must be able make informed decisions about what they feed their families, rather than making purchasing decisions – potentially dangerous ones – in the dark.
In the meantime, to arm yourself with as much knowledge as possible about the foods you buy, consult EWG’s Food Scores database, which rates products based on concerns about their nutrition, ingredients and whether they’re whole foods or heavily processed.
