Do Foods Products Labeled "Home-made" Contain Fewer Additives? A Brazilian Survey

The objective of this study was to investigate the presence and classes of food additives in packaged foods labeled 'home-made'. Food identification information was collected by photographing food labels (n = 5,620); the ingredients lists were subsequently transcribed for analysis. The ingredients list (foods labeled 'home-made' and similar foods) were compared regarding the presence and classes of additives (function) using the chi-square test and regarding the median number of additives using the Mann-Whitney test. For all tests,p< .05 was used as the significance level. We evaluated 65 products labeled 'home-made' and 172 comparable conventional products. Seventy-nine percent (n = 188) of all products (n = 237) contained additives. There was no significant difference between the percentage of foods with the 'home-made' claim (81%) and those without (78%) regarding the presence of additives (p= .605). No significant difference was observed in the median number of additives (p= .61) and in the number of classes of additives (p= .79) between foods with and without the claim. It can contribute globally to the reflection and the creation of public policies for the elaboration of criteria for the use or prohibition of the use of "home-made" claims on labels.