What beverage labels actually tell us — and don’t

Juan stands in front of a convenience store refrigerator, deciding what to drink. On one shelf are soft drinks. Beside them are bottled coffee, milk tea, flavored milk, yogurt drinks and iced tea, mostly promoted with images of leaves, fruit, milk, vitamins or an active lifestyle.

The soft drink seems like the obvious unhealthy choice. Meanwhile, the coffee contains milk, the yogurt drink has probiotics, and the tea has fruit. Surely, one of those must be healthier — and perhaps they are. But the difference may be smaller than it seems, and it’s because of how these products are built and labeled.

Most people rarely read and evaluate ingredient lists or the Nutrition Facts panel. We may decide quickly, often based on the product name, a picture, a familiar health claim, or the reputation of one ingredient. Coffee may feel more wholesome than soda, milk sounds nourishing, tea and fruit suggest freshness, and yogurt suggests digestive health. One positive feature shapes how we judge the entire product, a phenomenon nutritionists and researchers call “health halo.”

In the Philippines, the Department of Science and Technology Food and Nutrition Research Institute’s data show that among school-aged children and adolescents, the leading sources of vitamin C include orange fruit juice, lemon tea drinks and powdered iced tea. A vitamin most of us associate with fruit is reaching our children through sweetened drinks. But a beverage does not become nutritionally balanced simply because it contains a “healthier” ingredient. Such ingredients offer benefits, but they do not erase added sugar, saturated fat or excess calories. The front packaging can be factual and still not tell the full story.

Meanwhile, the back panel can also be deceptive. Added sugar can appear as sucrose, glucose syrup, fructose, corn syrup or fruit juice concentrate, which most may not immediately associate with sugar. Some products use more than one sweetening ingredient; others combine sugar with nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS) so the drink stays intensely sweet while containing less sugar than an earlier formulation. Creamers complicate it further. In powdered mixes, creamer reads as milk, but depending on the formulation, it may contain glucose syrup or other carbohydrates, vegetable fat and stabilizers. This is not concealed — it is simply difficult to decipher in the few seconds a purchase takes.

This is where policy enters the picture. The House committee on ways and means opens its first hearing this Monday (Sept. 14) on proposals to expand and raise the Philippine sweetened beverage tax. Much of that conversation may turn on reformulation and its larger implications on the market, on top of health and nutrition.

When manufacturers meaningfully cut added sugar, sodium or saturated fat, product reformulation improves the food supply without asking anyone to give up the products they enjoy. Systematic reviews show that reformulation can reduce population sugar intake depending on policy design, and that beverage taxes can raise prices and reduce purchases (Hashem, et al., 2019; Andreyeva, et al., 2022). Our government should work to reduce consumption of sweetened beverages through taxes, nutrition standards, labeling requirements and other public health measures. Consumers also pull in the same direction whenever demand rises for products with “less sugar,” “light,” or “zero.”

Reformulation is not always straightforward. A company may reduce sugar and replace the lost sweetness with a nonnutritive sweetener. Although this lowers calories and may be better than retaining the original amount of sugar, the drink stays just as sweet. This raises a broader question: are we only trying to reduce the amount of sugar, or to help people become less dependent on highly sweet tastes?

Nonnutritive sweeteners are assessed for safety and can help reduce sugar and calories in certain products. Yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) has advised against relying on them as a long-term strategy for disease prevention, pointing instead to unsweetened options and to naturally occurring sugars like sugars from fruit.

A reformulated drink can be a real improvement and still not be an ideal everyday drink. “Less sugar” is a relative comparison, usually with the product’s own past formula — not with water, other unsweetened options or a nutritional standard.

This is also the clearest argument for taxing beverages sweetened with sugar and nonnutritive sweeteners alike, which is how the sweetened beverage tax is currently set up. Creating an exemption for nonnutritive sweeteners would move manufacturers towards these alternatives, still reinforcing Filipinos’ preference for sweet-tasting drinks.

Reformulation for one nutrient can quietly move another, and single-nutrient targets carry trade-offs, with sodium, fat or other additives taking up the slack. A tax aimed at sugar therefore works best beside labeling that flags every nutrient of concern (including sodium and fat), so that what changes inside the package shows on the front of its label.

The same caution applies to “made with real fruit,” “with vitamins,” “contains milk,” or “with probiotics.” Each claim may be factually correct. Yet, consumers may interpret it as a complete judgment of the product’s healthfulness. One beneficial component can distract from less favorable features elsewhere in the formulation. Marketing then adds another layer: slim bodies, athletes, green leaves, farms, splashing milk and words such as “natural,” “active” and “wellness.” These images may make no false claim, but they tell a story far more memorable than the nutrition information printed in small text elsewhere.

This is especially concerning when products high in nutrients of concern are marketed to children and adolescents, who have difficulty separating advertising imagery from actual nutritional quality. Adults struggle with it too; how much more do children? Repeated exposure also normalizes sweet drinks as part of school, recreation, celebrations and everyday hydration.

The burden of making sense of all this should not fall entirely on individual consumers. Expecting everyone to decode ingredient lists and compute nutrients per bottle is unrealistic. Information also has to be understood at a glance. That is the case for clear and interpretive front-of-pack labeling: a mark that flags products high in calories, sugar, sodium or saturated fat, complementing rather than replacing the Nutrition Facts panel. The Philippines is already moving this way. Earlier this year, FNRI and the NNC convened consultations on labeling approaches, alongside the recent adoption of the Philippine Nutrient Profile Model.

Labeling and taxation work on the same food environment. When high sugar becomes either more visible or more expensive, companies may have a stronger incentive to improve their products — not just to make the packaging appear healthier, but to improve the formulation itself.

In the meantime, consumers should adopt the following habits: read past the product name and the picture; check how many servings are in the package; compare sugar and calories across similar drinks rather than trusting a single favorable claim; and remember that water has never needed claims nor attractive imagery to be the best everyday choice.

A beverage may contain coffee, milk, tea, fruit, vitamins or probiotics and still contribute a substantial share of a day’s sugar. A reformulated product with less sugar may be genuine progress, even if imperfect. Proper nutrition is not about labeling foods as entirely good or entirely bad, but about seeing the whole product rather than letting one ingredient, one claim, or one image speak for its totality.

The sugar we do not see is not always literally hidden. It is printed on the package, legible only to those with the time and training to look. The greater problem is that it sits surrounded by messages that are easier to notice and much easier to believe.