We all understand how important it is not to eat too much fat, too many carbohydrates or sugar in our diet. However the majority of us don’t know how much and what is in the food we buy in the supermarket. Luckily all items that are packaged have to by law, include what’s in them, for example they have to tell you how much salt and fat is in the item. These have to be clearly labeled on the product that makes it so much simpler, or does it?

If the labels confuse you, then here is a guide of what you should look for and what is contained in the product. All products must now contain the common name of the product, the name and address of the manufacturer and the net content in terms of weight, count or measure. They must also contain the following:

The list of ingredients – this obviously should contain a list of everything that is included within the product. Not only this but the ingredients which are more prominent should be listed at the top, for example if the product contains 95% meat then this will be listed first, the rest of the ingredients go in descending order.

Serving sizes or portions – serving sizes can be very misleading, how do you determine what a portion is? Well now this is made a little easier because on the packaging it should state how many people the product will serve. Check the label to see for the number of servings and the serving size. Get out your measuring cups, if need be, so you know *exactly* how many calories you’re eating.

Nutritional facts – this is some of the most important information, the advice on the product had to give the nutritional information per serving. When considering the nutritional facts you should take into account that 1 gr. of fat is equal to calories, 1 gr. of protein is equal to 4 calories, 1 gr. of carb`s is equal to 4 calories and 1 gr. of alcohol is equal to 7 calories. The information on many packets are easy to read and are usually shown in a graph, however all products show the nutritional information differently but they do have to show it.

Claims on food labels

Sometimes terms that are used on foods can be very confusing, for example what exactly does fat free mean? What does sugar free mean? Here are those terms explained in detail.

• For a product to be fat free then it has to have less than 0.5 grams of fat in it.
• Low fat is 3 grams or less per serving of the product.
• Saturated free means that the product contains less than 0.5 grams of saturated fat
• Cholesterol free means that the product must contain less than 2mg of cholesterol for every serving
• Low cholesterol means that there should be 20mg or less of cholesterol per serving
• Low calorie means that the product cannot contain any more than 20 calories per serving
• Extra lean means that the product must contain less than 5 grams of fat per 100 gram.

Learning how to make sense of food labels is a must if you want to lose weight.

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Eat better, move more, and believe in yourself!

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