The Republican-led FCC has voted on and approved a proposal that would make it harder for consumers to receive itemized bills with accurate information from their ISPs, . This proposal revises previous “unnecessary” requirements on the grounds “may confuse customers.”
These changes would minimize the benefit of the so-called “nutrition labels” which are otherwise known as Broadband Facts labels. You’ve likely run into these simple itemized labels when shopping for a broadband plan. They tell consumers exactly what we are paying for, even if it may “confuse” our fragile little minds.
The FCC passed a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) on October 28 that would significantly scale back the Broadband Facts label. ISPs have been required to publish these labels since April, 2024. All Republican commission members voted to approve the change, while the lone Democrat dissented.
As previously noted, this is technically just an NPRM. So it’s not a done deal just yet. There will be a final vote in the near future, but it’s expected to pass given the political makeup of the commission.
Once passed, ISPs will no longer be required to read these labels over the phone to customers, make them available in account portals or give a complete accounting of fees to customers. The FCC previously stated that these transparency requirements are “unduly burdensome and provide minimal benefit to consumers.” I happen to think that knowing what I’m shelling $100 out for each month to be of maximal benefit. Maybe that’s just me.
These labels were initially proposed all the way back in 2016, before being implemented by the Biden administration in 2024. They offer a breakdown of every little thing that goes into a bill for a service plan, including many “hidden fees” that ISPs don’t include in advertised plan prices.
It’s worth noting that the labels will technically still exist, they will just be harder to find and won’t be all that useful. Raza Panjwani, senior policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, refers to this as a political “two-step.” He told CNET that the modus operandi here is to make the labels “less useful” and then say “Oh, look, it’s not that useful. We should get rid of it.”
Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the commission, called the proposal “one of the most anti-consumer items I have seen” and expressed extreme displeasure with the results of the vote. “What adds insult to injury is that the FCC does not even explain why this proposal is necessary,” she said. “Make it make sense.”
Despite claims to the contrary by Brendan Carr and the current FCC, consumers actually like these labels. A 2024 study of nearly 5,000 broadband customers .
As an aside, Americans pay a lot for internet service throughout the world. We pay around twice as much as customers in Europe and most of Asia.
These days, we need to be amateur detectives in order to figure out the truth behind products and whether they are good for us. Recently my mom told me she found an amazing bread company at a farmers’ market. I asked a few simple questions: Was it gluten-free? (Both her and my dad are meant to be avoiding it.) Was it organic? What kind of oil was in it? What other ingredients? Was it wrapped in brown paper with an artisanal-looking label and tied with rustic twine? My mom, laughing, said, “It was! It looked so nice.” Food packaging tricks fooled her!
After listening to me for 12 years, my mom rarely gets fooled by the label anymore – but the packaging did her in! And she’s not alone. We’re all being fooled by the packaging these days.
As you know, I encourage us all to take an active role in deciding what we purchase by honing our BS detectors and educating ourselves before we make purchases. Unfortunately, as we’ve become smarter, so have the companies trying to grab our moolah and belly space; evolving their food packaging tricks to convince us that their products are healthy and worthy of the higher price tag.
I am also not immune to being fooled by the label, and I consider myself to be a sharp and experienced shopper. I’ve written extensively about the label claims companies use to lure us, like “gluten-free”, “vegan” or “100% natural”, and we devoted an entire episode of the Today Is The Day podcast to this as well. But beyond the words lie even more tricks – ones that are visual – that play on our emotions and attempt to influence our buying decisions.
Back when I studied fashion marketing, I took a course on packaging design. I was fascinated by the process. Nowadays, since the advent of one of the most bizarre social video trends I’ve ever seen, unboxing, the stakes are even higher when it comes to the packaging.
For the sake of this post, I am putting my abhorrence for wasteful, garbage-making excess packaging into a little box that we’ll be revisiting in an upcoming post next month. Today we’re all about looks.
The Food Packaging Trickery Test
Before you read any further, please have a look at the below four bottles of sesame oil. Take out a piece of paper or use your phone and play along!
Based on packaging alone, make your pick for the following and mark down your answers:
Best quality?
Most economical (cheapest)?
Which would you be inclined to purchase?
Answers revealed below.
How to Recognize Food Packaging Tricks
Packaging Colours
Companies employ ‘colour psychology’ to prompt an emotional response and convince us to buy their products. The colours marketers choose for their packaging have a big influence on our perception of the health benefits of the product. For example, earth tones like greens and browns are more likely to convince us that a product is healthy, eco-friendly, wholesome and natural. Beyond Meat, for example, used every single trick in the book packaging their processed pea protein patties.
Get this, we even think candy bars with green labels are more healthful than red ones (this a link to an actual study testing this!), even when the information on the nutrition label and the calorie counts are exactly the same!
Colour saturation matters too. We view soft, muted colours as healthier than bright and vivid ones. The subdued colours seem more natural, as opposed to bright ones that make us think of artificial colours and artificial flavours.
Want to take a test? Okay, which of these granola bars do you think is the healthiest option?
What did you guess? How confident are you?
The answer is none of them. They’re all garbage but something about the packaging on the one you chose, spoke to you and made you think it was the healthier option.
Photography/Images
Beautiful meadows, water, trees, flowers, grass, animals, farms and other pastoral images try to persuade us that the food is coming directly from the source, with minimal processing or adulteration. In most cases, the actual mechanisms that transform the food from farm to package are anything but natural. Often those foods never even came from a farm in the first place and were constructed in a lab.
In the case of Cal-Organics, one of the largest distributors of organic food in North America, the food comes from hundreds of farms across the US and has become part of the big food mess that has triggered global food recalls. I wrote more about that here.
Tall, slim food packages can often give the perception of being fancier and may also carry a price tag that could support that misconception. The best thing to do when comparing two products is forget the size of the package and just look at the volume measure on the bottle. Olive oil is a prime example of this. 750 ml can look different depending on the bottle. Check the size, the ingredient and the real certifications to help you decide what the best option is.
Paper Packaging
Brown paper packaging and cardboard has a rustic look and feel, which makes us think the product is better for us. In one poll, Americans said they preferred paper or cardboard packaging because it seemed safer and more trustworthy from a food safety perspective, plus they liked that paper is recyclable. While I’m all for ditching plastic for better alternatives, paper doesn’t automatically equal a healthful product!
Your best defence against being fooled by the label is reading the ingredients on the package. The ingredient list will tell you everything you need to know. Not all products that use the food packaging tricks I’ve mentioned are detrimental to your health, but you won’t know until you actually read the ingredient label – this should always be your first stop!
The Packaging Test: Truth Revealed
After reading the above, would your answer to the three questions about the sesame oil change?
I took the price and divided it by millilitre in the bottle to get the cost per millilitre.
For my values of aiming to always choose organic and not fall prey to the packaging, option C is the clear winner. Based on packaging alone, this would have likely been my last choice.
What I also loved about this random test, random because I had no clue what the outcome would be when I snapped this photo while shopping last weekend, was that the package I considered to be the ugliest was also organic and the most economical choice.
Doesn’t that turn the packaging trickery, and our preconceived notions about organic food being more expensive, right upside down.
