But where do you start? Labelling legislation varies from one country to the next. This article is UK specific but that does not mean that if you are in Canada you should not read it. Food labelling is different but not that different.
What Should Food Labels Tell Us?
Some information is mandatory. Labels should not be without
- All the ingredients which must be listed in order of descending weight
- Date marking
"Use by" and "best before".
"Best before" means that the food should not go stale before a certain date, food can still be consumed after the best before date, but you should not eat food after the "use by date", it would not be safe to do so.
Other indications are:
- The name of the food
- The manufacturers' details
- Cooking and storage instructions
- Size: weight or volume
- Additives
The nutritional breakdown:
The big 4
- Energy (kcal),
- Carbohydrate,
- Protein,
- Fat
The little 4
- Saturates
- Sugar
- Fibre
- Sodium
Choosing Healthier Options:
What is too much?
- Fat: 20g or more per 100g
- Saturated fat : 5g or more per 100g
- Sugar: 10g or more per 100g
- Sodium: 0.5g or more per 100g
What should you aim for?
- Fat 3g or less per 100g
- Saturated fat 1.5g or less per 100g
- Sugar 2g or less per 100g
- Sodium 0.1g or less per 100g
- Fibre 3g or more per 100g
Recognising the Fat Content of Food
When you decide on buying a product, you should make sure that less than 30% comes from fat. Most people in the UK eat too much saturated fat.
- The average man should have no more than 30g saturated fat a day
- The average woman should have no more than 20g saturated fat a day
For a little while now, manufacturers have tried to make it easy for us to read the labels using traffic light colours to help you make your choice.
"Traffic lights" show how much fat/saturates/sugars/salt, the product contains and with its colour coding tell us if it is low (green) or high (red). This is very handy to speed up your choice so you can decide to buy or pass at a glance.
However this is new and far for being universal. There are products that we buy regularly and sometimes it comes as a surprise to realise what is really in these products. So if you wanted to make your own calculation on your favorite products here is how to do it:
For example a product contains 18g of fat and 184 kcal for 100g.
- 18 (grams of fat in 100g) (18)
- x 9 (calories in 1g of fat) (162)
- ÷ 194 (calories per 100g) (0.835)
- x 100 (to get the percentage of calories from fat (84)
This product contains 84% of fat. (guidelines less than 30%)
