"Healthwashing" describes the marketing tactics food companies use to make products appear healthier than they really are, often to justify premium prices. The Planet Money piece explains this through the economic concept of asymmetric information: because buyers cannot easily verify a product's true nutritional content, sellers have an incentive to mislead them with buzzwords, appealing packaging and selective health claims, creating a "health halo" that masks less healthy ingredients like sugar, salt or saturated fat.

Nutrition expert Marion Nestle of NYU features prominently, using examples such as "Cookies & Crème" flavoured protein Cheerios to illustrate dubious health claims, and advising shoppers to check ingredient lists rather than trust marketing labels. A University of California, Davis study is also cited, finding that 89% of products claiming to contain pure avocado oil actually had other oils mixed in. The article concludes that genuinely healthy foods, such as fresh produce, rarely need labels at all, and that clearer front-of-pack labelling or warning symbols could help consumers see through healthwashing.