Government To Issue Guidelines On Healthwashing
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
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By Linus Garg
First publised on 2024-09-26 01:52:54
About the Author
Linus tackles things head-on. He takes sides in his analysis and it fits excellently with our editorial policy. No 'maybe's' and 'allegedly' for him, only things in black and white.
View all posts by this Author
False Claims?
Finally, the government has woken up to the practice of healthwashing that some companies indulge in marketing their products. Increasingly, some companies are taking advantage of the fact that consumers have become health conscious. They are marketing their products by adding certain attributes in the marketing spin, and on product labels, which may or may not be present in the product. By doing this, they increase the price of the product by a significant percentage and prey on the consumers by taking advantage of their health concerns.
Who Certifies?
The question is: are the products really healthy? Are the claims of "low sugar", "no added sugar", "contains natural extracts", "high in protein", "supports urinary tract health" and others actually true? And is self-certification by the company enough? Or should there be an outside (government?) agency that should certify it?
Guidelines
The government has announced that it will formulate guidelines on healthwashing soon. This is right. Companies should not be allowed to claim anything without verification. The guidelines should focus only on one thing: that the companies do not fool the consumers into paying extra without actually making the products as healthy as they claim it to be.
Hopefully, the guidelines will address all these issues and stop this unethical practice by some companies.
Note: Lead picture taken from an article on Sunstack by Zeina Amhaz. Caption is ours.
