Food labels are there to give you some quick and simple information on the foods nutritional content. But unfortunately its not really that straight forward if you are not sure what you are looking for and if you were to check over every item you buy when you do your food shop it could probably be classed as a second job, it would take you so long!
First of all, all food should come with nutritional labeling by law, if you find something which doesn't have this information the last place you want to put it is inside your body.
If you feel like your in a nutritional minefield when you look at nutrition information, read on and fear not, you are not alone!
The Back Of The Packet
The information on the back provides information on calories, fat, carbohydrates, sugars, fiber, protein and salt. Its also broken down into per serving and per 100 grams.
The NHS website explains how you can reference this information and know if the food your eating is going to be high in fat, salt or sugar with the guidelines bellow.
Fat
High: more than 17.5g of fat per 100g
Low: 3g of fat or less per 100g
Saturated fat
High: more than 5g of saturated fat per 100g
Low: 1.5g of saturated fat or less per 100g
Sugars
High: more than 22.5g of total sugars per 100g
Low: 5g of total sugars or less per 100g
Salt
High: more than 1.5g of salt per 100g (or 0.6g sodium)
Low: 0.3g of salt or less per 100g (or 0.1g sodium)
The Front Of The Pack
Many supermarkets and companies now show some information on the front of the packet which again have the break down of calories, fat, saturates, sugars and salt.
This can often be accompanied by a colour code system which allows you to know at a glance whether they contain a high (red), medium (orange) or low (green) amount of salt fat and sugar based on your RDA (recommended daily allowance)
Whoever came up with this idea deserves a pat on the back. This person has made your life a lot easier. As a rule of thumb avoid the red and orange markers as much as possible if you are trying to lose fat and become as healthy as possible.
The Ingredients List
This list should be short.
It shouldn't have words you cannot pronounce or have no idea about what they are.
The ingredients always start from the ingredient with the largest amount through to the smallest. Therefore if you are going to buy some tomato soup and the first ingredient isn't tomatoes or water, you need to ask yourself the question "is this really tomato soup?"
A lot of pre-prepared food have additives and E numbers in them to extend the products shelf lifetime. Generally the shorter the list of ingredients the better, so always make sure that you are checking what you are eating.
