Do you know what you're eating?

This came to me the other day when talking about palm oil (there had just been a programme on about Orangutans habitats being destryoed for palm oil, it was really sad!). My husband didn't know anything about how to read food labels. So, I thought it might be a wee useful blog for someone out there, let me know what you think.

Ingredients

Ingredients are listed in weight order, so whatever a product contains most of appears first on the list. So in the chocolate spread below, the 2 main ingredients are sugar and oil. Sorry! But, still yummers.

Red, Amber, Green

Normally on the front of the packaging, if the food has high, medium or low amounts of fat, sugars and salt. This does not show you whether a food is high in protein or carbs, so if these are important metric's for you, use the more in depth information on the back of the label.

Lots of green on the label, the healthier the choice. Best option if you are watching your weight, or trying to reduce your salt intake.

Amber means neither high nor low, so you can eat foods with all or mostly amber on the label most of the time.

Red on the label means the food is high in fat, saturated fat, salt or sugars, and these are the foods we should cut down on. Try to eat these foods less often and in small amounts.

You can see here that this cereral is high in sugar, also, pay attention to portion sizes. I know that 40g of cereal looks like nothing, so if your portion sizes are bigger then the volume of fat, sugar, salt will be higher too.

Try weighing out your next bowl of cereal to compare!

Nutrition Labels

Normally on the back of a packet, in a grid format and shows information on energy (kJ/kcal), fat, saturates (saturated fat), carbohydrate, sugars, protein and salt.

They can also show information on certain nutrients, such as fibre. All nutrition information is provided per 100 grams and sometimes per portion.

Government guidelines below to tell you if a food is high in fat, saturated fat, salt or sugar, or not:

Total 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)

Remember, these are guidelines not hard and fast rules, so if you go over or under on a daily basis, the nutrition gods are not going to fire you down!

Manufacturers sometimes also give the information above in a smaller format on the front of packaing, this makes its a little easier to compare products next to each other.

Be careful though, as your portion size might be very different that recommended sizes (CRUNCHY NUT CORNFLAKES)....but thats another blog!

There are food tracking apps that keep an eye on what you are consuming and track your calories, fats, carbs, proteins, salt and sugar. I like to use MyFitness Pal for user simplicity (needs to be simple for me to use!)

If you are interested in finding out more about nutrition please get in touch!

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