A recent study by Swiss agricultural research organisation Agroscope shows that many plant-based milk alternatives carry numerous labels - but not all of them deliver what they promise. The „no added sugar“ label in particular can be misleading.
In a market analysis, 66 plant-based milk alternatives from Swiss supermarkets were analysed. The researchers identified a total of 327 labels on the packaging, with up to nine different labels per product. The most common were nutritional labels (34 %), diet labels (29 %) and allergen-free labels (18 %). Sustainability labels such as „organic“ or „fair trade“, on the other hand, only accounted for 11 % and 1 % respectively.
The labels „vegan“ (21 %), „lactose-free“ (13 %) and „no added sugar“ (10 %) were particularly common. However, the latter proved to be potentially misleading: on average, products with this label did not have a lower sugar content than those without this label. The reason for this is the natural sugar content of the ingredients, which is not taken into account in the labelling.
The Nutri-Score, a label for nutritional labelling, was mainly found on oat milk alternatives. It was hardly present on other products such as rice, soya, pea, almond and coconut drinks. Interestingly, rice-based milk alternatives had a better calculated Nutri-Score than other products despite having a higher sugar content.
The study concludes that the large number of labels on milk substitute products can be confusing for consumers. In particular, labels such as „no added sugar“ should be avoided if they do not fulfil clearly defined criteria. In addition, more standardised and transparent labelling of nutritional quality is recommended to enable informed purchasing decisions.
The complete study is available on the website of Agrarforschung Schweiz: Labelling of milk substitute products: What does it say and what's in it?
