Shopping and food labels.

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Are you confused by food labels when you go shopping? Food labels are often so difficult to understand and marketing so sophisticated these days that many people find the whole thing very confusing. The aim of marketing is to get us to buy that manufacturer's product and everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon to try and convince us that their products are the healthiest ones. By understanding what to look for on a label we will be able to make healthier choices.

When looking at a food label the ingredients will be listed in order, starting with the ingredient that the product contains the most of, followed by the other ingredients in order, so that the last product on the list will contain the least amounts in that particular product.

So, even though they might not actually tell you how much of a particular ingredient is in the product you will know that if it is fairly high up the list it is going to contain a high proportion of that ingredient. Most products list the ingredient amounts for one 100gram serving (4ounces). So, if a yoghurt contains 28g of sugar in one 100gram pot that means that one third of it is sugar! Not so healthy then!

Yoghurts are a good example as most people think of them as being a fairly healthy option but the amount of sugar in them can vary widely and some of them contain up to six teaspoons of sugar in one pot! Anything ending with an – ose – is sugar, e.g. sucrose, glucose, dextrose, fructose, maltose and lactose. Another sugar is corn syrup, which is found in many processed foods and is found in all sorts of foods that you wouldn't realise until you look at the ingredients.

People automatically think of low fat products as being healthy but this is very often misleading as they can often contain high amounts of sugar instead. When we consume sugar the energy we do not use gets converted into fat so it is just as bad for us, plus the fact that we have had to use the body's reserves of vital nutrients in order to do this as sugar has no nutritional value whatsoever. So look at the label to see how much sugar it contains first before making your healthy low fat choice.

The other marketing strategy that now seems to be popular is for manufacturers to tell us that their products contain health promoting products such as omega 3 oils or probiotics. It is true that these ingredients can be beneficial to us, however look at the way in which they are worded (contains plant sterols which have been shown to lower cholesterol) as the actual amounts of these ingredients that are included can be so miniscule that they are unlikely to have much effect.

Avoid foods that contain bad fats. Check labels for their saturated fat content and in particular try to avoid hydrogenated or trans fatty acids , often found in margarines and processed foods. These fats are the most harmful to your health as they have been chemically changed which means your body will have trouble in breaking them down and have now been linked to heart disease. Just cutting the bad fats out of your diet could help to lower your blood pressure.

When looking at the salt content of a product remember that if it is listed as sodium , x by 2.5 to get the salt content and be aware that monosodium glutamate will add to the salt content.