A Guide to Food Labels

Free range, cage-free, or pasture-raised? All-natural or organic? The grocery store is awash in labels appealing to our conscience. Some claim the food in question is free of pesticides or antibiotics or genetic modification. Others promise that animals were well cared-for or that workers were well-treated. There are labels touting their power to protect the rainforest and make life easier for birds. How is a consumer to know which are meaningful and which are false advertising? How did our food labeling system get so fractured? Expert label decoder Urvashi Rangan, director of Consumer Safety and Sustainability for Consumer Reports, helps us separate the wheat from the chaff.