It is marketing hype... but then you have to realize that the general public isn't necessarily educated on nutritional information. In fact, most people are downright ignorant about what's in their food.


I had customers who didn't know the difference between fat and carbs, protein and salt, that cholesterol is a component of fat, that sugar is a carb, or that the calories are based on a single serving, which is usually not the entire package.



Based on what I saw every day at work, most people don't even care what's in the food they eat until a doctor puts them on a special diet, or they decide to do a diet that excludes or limits a certain component or nutrient, such as gluten - then and only then would they show some interest in what they ate, but rather than researching before shopping so they'd know which foods contained/didn't contain/were high/low in certain things, or reading the nutrition stats or ingredients on the back, they would just look for the declaration on the label. (Chances are they'd also need their glasses to read the stuff on the back, but they might be able to read the big declaration on the front without their glasses)



I dealt with a lot of customers who would proudly declare what diet they were doing (or what the doctor told them they needed to give up), but their entire order was composed of foods that were the exact opposite of what that diet required.



~No, your heavy cream is not fat free.
~Sorry, your bag of oreos are not keto friendly.
~Um, no - "I can't believe it's not butter" is not actually real butter.
~No, real butter is not fat free, and yes, real butter has cholesterol.

~Your store baked bread, donuts, muffins, cake and cookies are made from wheat flour, so none of them are gluten free.
~This local brand of potato chips is cooked in lard, so no, it's not cholesterol free.
~Sorry, organic only means the product is produced without chemically produced fertilizers, chemically produced herbicides, and chemically produced insecticides. It doesn't necessarily mean it's fat free, cholesterol free, vegan, sodium free, and it can still have artificial flavors or colors if they're organically produced.


I could go on and on...