USF St. Petersburg campus Honors Program Theses (Undergraduate)

Kaitlyn Gross

First Advisor

Deby Cassill, Ph.D. Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences

Second Advisor

Anna Dixon, Ph.D. Visiting Professor, College of Arts and Sciences

Third Advisor

Thomas W. Smith, Ph.D. Associate Professor, College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Document Type

Thesis

Date Available

May 2013

Publication Date

2013

Date Issued

May 2013

Abstract

In America today, obesity has become commonplace and health-related costs are rising. Therefore, it is imperative that Americans start eating healthier foods. To start, Americans need to ingest less sugar. This may be complicated by the fact that food companies might be deceiving consumers with confusing, incomplete or misleading information on food labels that include nutrition facts and the list of ingredients. Certain practices, such as not distinguishing between added sugar and total sugar, although legal, can mislead the consumer into thinking the food is healthier than it is. Currently, such labeling is not required (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2005). The objective of this paper is to determine whether these companies are purposely employing deceptive techniques such as using multiple types of sugar in their products to make the ingredients list appear more healthful. Our first null hypothesis is that there will be no difference in the type of sugar used by the four food groups sampled. The second null hypothesis is that there will be no difference in the order of sugar used by the four food groups. The third null hypothesis is that there will be no difference in the diversity of sweeteners by food type.

Comments

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the University Honors Program, University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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