Supermarket foods claiming to be ‘natural’ or ‘sustainable’ mostly just using marketing terms, researchers find

Foods in supermarkets boasting environmental terms such as “natural” or “sustainable” are mostly just using marketing speak, rather than verified claims, Australian researchers have found. More than 27,000 packaged foods sold at Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, IGA and Harris Farm supermarkets in Sydney were assessed by researchers from the George Institute for Global Health. Nearly four in 10 products carried some sort of sustainability claim, the study in Public Health Nutrition found. Associate Prof Alexandra Jones, the institute’s program lead for food governance, said the majority of claims were self-declared by the manufacturer, without independent verification. “Consumers are increasingly trying to make food choices that are good for the planet, and manufacturers know it. What we’re finding is that the labels designed to guide those choices are largely unregulated and that creates real risks of greenwashing.” Out of 69 different environmental claims identified by the researchers, “natural” and “vegan” appeared most often. Some, like “sustainable” or “natural”, were so broad as to be almost meaningless, she said. “There’s no legal meaning of ‘natural’, but we know that people associate it with being better for you, or being better for the environment,” she said. “But many things are natural that are not good in a health context. …