By Reem Abdulrahman Jassim al-Muftah
When it comes to purchasing your food, do you read the food labels along the sides of each item? If not, I cannot stress how important it is to educate yourself before making a decision to purchase any processed item and it only takes a minute. Why? The ‘ingredients’ list and the ‘nutrition facts’ table are two critical labels to quickly scan through before deciding to put a product in your basket. While taking a few seconds of your time to look through these labels you will be able to get a better idea of the nutritional value of the item as well find your way through any misleading claims.
First off, manufacturers love to use the claim game and marking terms that they believe the consumer wants to see. For example, let’s look at common claims we see such as ‘lite,’ ‘low-calorie,’ ‘low-fat’ and ‘diet.’ Products that claim to be lighter are usually either watered down or more processed to reduce calories and fat. You also must beware of the added sugar substitutes too! Let’s take ‘organic’ for example, some sugars are sold as ‘organic sugars’ although sugar is just sugar at the end of the day, so why even state the unnecessary? Others to look out for are ‘multigrain’ claims since you should actually be looking for ‘wholegrain’ which is much more nutritional, ‘no added sugar’ when the product is already naturally high in sugar but just for fun states there is no more added sugar, ‘natural’ claiming that the products is natural although it might just have come from a natural source before it was completely processed and ‘gluten-free’ although the item might be packed with unhealthy ingredients. Another area of concern is the numerous names and alternatives for sugar such as cane sugar, molasses, syrup, maltose, corn sweetener and my personal favorite, evaporated cane juice.
When it comes to reading all the front, side and back labels, make sure to try to cross-reference them all. When the item states sugar-free, look for sugars or its friends in the ingredients and the percent daily value of sugar. When the item states wholegrain, look out for the refined grains. When the items states ‘full of fibre’ or ‘fortified,’ look closely at the nutrition facts. This is why we really need to understand how to read each and every label.
Ingredients List: Products list their ingredients in order of highest to lowest quantities, meaning the first 1-3 ingredients make up most of the product. As you read the list, look out for things such as sugars, oils and refined grains and others such as chemicals, preservatives and colouring. Look for items that list whole, natural and simple foods that you easily understand as soon as you read it. Another red flag to look out for is how long the ingredients list is, if it is more than 2-3 lines then you can safely assume that the product is highly processed and not so nutritionally valuable.
Nutrition Facts: Products display the nutritional information in terms of serving size and percent daily value in terms. Make sure to do the math in terms of the serving size vs the amount you think you would eat. Serving sizes are usually smaller portions than what most people would have. In some cases, like a bag of biscuits or cookies, the label might show you the calories and nutritional data of a serving size of one biscuit or cookie rather than a handful or the whole bag. Within nutrition labels, manufacturers try to mislead the consumer and show smaller amounts of sugars and saturated fats. To figure out how many calories in the bag or how much sugar used for the whole bag, you have to compute the serving size by the weight of the bag. It’s all about simple math, so don’t stress, just use your natural instinct and logic and if your lost just look up the food label infographics online.
So, listen up people, do not let the manufacturers mislead you into buying their unhealthy products. Firstly, always opt for purchasing whole foods rather than processed foods, but if you have to buy processed then at least read through the food labels and make an educated decision for you and your family’s health before buying any product.
* The author is a wellness advocate and influencer @keys2balance.
