How to read food labels – Part 1
Posted on | August 30, 2010 | No Comments
With the endless pre-packaged food options these days – it’s so important that you understand how to read and understand what’s being put in your food.
Here is some advice for how to read food labels. Practice at home from what’s in your cupboard and you’ll soon become an expert.
1. There are compulsory nutrients that must be listed on Nutrition Information Panels:
Energy (Calories); Protein, Fat (Total, Saturated and Trans); Carbohydrate (Total Sugars) and Sodium.
This is what a nutrition panel looks like:
Nutrition Panel
2. There must be a ‘per serving’ column to help consumers assess the nutrition of the food (However this can be very deceiving!!) Remember to ALWAYS check how many servings come in the package you are eating.
Note: When looking at the nutrition panel above, you can tell that there are 72 biscuits in the package. They estimate that one biscuit weighs 3.6g and each biscuit contains 16.5 calories. (1 calorie = 4.18 kJ)
Therefore – if you ate 6 biscuits you would need to calculate: 16.5 calories x 6 = 99 calories.
3. There must also be a ‘Per 100g’ column to enable you to compare different products against each other (As not all products are same size).
Here is a reference for what you should be looking for in the nutrition panel to make the healthiest choice:
The following are large amounts per 100g:
30g+ of sugars
20g+ of fat
3g+ of fibre
600 mg+ of sodium
The following are small amounts per 100g:
2g of sugars
3g of fat
0.5g of fibre
200 mg sodium
Therefore…. a healthy choice would contain: Less than 2g of Sugar, Less than 3g Fat, Less than 200mg Sodium, More than 3g Fibre per 100g.
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Tags: how to make healthy food choices when shopping > How to read food labels > how to read nutrition panels > read food labels > read food panels
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1 monthago- Info : Please, resolve the addition below before post any new comment...
- Guest_1967 : Hi, would you know the nutrional information of Thai vermicelli salad? All I can find is for Phad Thai, but I'm looking for the boiled glass noodle one.
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