I attended the most recent installment of The Food Dialogues last week, held at Kendall College in Chicago right down the street from my office.

This was the seventh in the series being sponsored by the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance in an effort to engage and inform the public about how food is made from farm to fork.

The nine-member panel was moderated by Ellie Krieger, who hosts the Food Network’s Healthy Appetite, and consisted of farmers, a rancher, a dairyman, a food association spokesman, an agricultural economist, a former USDA official, a corporate chef and an organic research grants coordinator.

The topic: “Transparency and Food: Our Responsibility to Make Information Available to Today’ Consumers.”

Much of the 90-minute discussion centered on food labels.

Part of the debate I found intriguing was whether or not labels should be allowed that, while accurate, also stand a good chance of deceiving or confusing consumers.

Former USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan was on the panel. She advocated for allowing any label that is accurate. She said if they want to be able to say their product is harvested only on Tuesday evenings under a full moon, for marketing purposes, they should be able to say that as long as it’s true.

Others argued against labels that, while accurate, are purposefully deceptive. “Hormone-free poultry” is the classic example. Since it is illegal to use hormones in U.S. poultry production, all fresh poultry is hormone-free. Yet, the label insinuates that perhaps the product’s competitors are not hormone-free.

“Trans fat-free blueberries” is another example. Think about that one for a minute. Then think again if you believe that everyone knows that no fresh blueberries contain trans fat. One farmer on the panel described having a class of students and their teacher visit his farm and it was the teacher who asked, “Now, we know the white eggs come from hens. Do the brown eggs come from roosters?”

Members of the food industry know that educating consumers is difficult. Is it ever ethical to confuse them on purpose? I have to disagree with former Deputy Secretary Merrigan on this one.

From a newsroom perspective, it’s not unlike the decisions we make in our news planning meetings every day about headlines. We want you to click on our headlines and read our stories. However, if we headline a story, “Fire breaks out in plant,” and the story ends up to be about a waste can fire in accounting that was put out in 30 seconds with a cup of coffee, we may have gotten your attention, but wouldn’t you think you had been duped? I think we’ve had plenty of examples of how badly consumers can react when they feel they have been duped about the food they eat. Think about it.

We resist the temptation to write accurate, yet misleading, headlines. The food industry should resist the temptation to use misleading labels.

Disclosure: is being accurate really enough?

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