Deciphering Food Labels

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Reading food labels can be confusing…sometimes manufacturers can disguise saturated fats by calling various names, and ‘Reduced Fat’ doesn’t necessarily mean low fat and ‘Lite’ or ‘Light’ can mean anything.

With all these marketing smoke screens…its easy to fool yourself into thinking you’ve made some healthy food choices.

So here’s some information that might help you make better food choices on your next grocery shop…

Marketing/Labelling…

1. Cholesterol Free: This doesn’t mean that the food has to be healthy, low in fat or kilojoules, or low in saturated fat. It just means it’s free from dietary cholesterol. Some foods might be cholesterol free, but it doesn’t mean they aren’t high in saturated fat…e.g coconut and palm oil fit into this category. Commercial biscuits and cakes often contain coconut and palm oil which as usually listed on the ingredients as ‘vegetable fat’ or ‘vegetable oil’.
2. Lite or Light: This can refer to anything. They might have less salt, fat or sugar. It doesn’t necessarily mean low in kilojoules (or calories) or low in fat. In some cases ‘Lite’ is used to say something about flavour. E.g olive oil that is lite in flavour.
3. Reduced Fat: This doesn’t always mean low in fat. Reduced Fat cheddar cheese still has 25% fat, and therefore would still be considered a high fat food. Cream cheese claiming to be 82% fat free are therefore 18% fat full…still making them a high fat food. Always check the nutrition panels for total fat content.
4. Low Fat: Means that <3% fat for solid foods or <1.5% for liquid foods.
5. Toasted or oven baked: Toasted muesli still has double the fat of untoasted muesli. Baked products still have been cooked with oil.

Ingredients Lists:

These are generally listed with the main ingredients listed in order from the largest to smallest amount used based on the weight of the ingredients. The major ingredients are usually the first 3 listed.

Look out for Saturated Fats in Disguise: Other words that are high fat ingredients are:

Vegetable oil, palm oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil, palm kernel oil, copha, animal fat, tallow, lard, shortening, chocolate, monoglycerides, diglycerides, full cream milk solids. Ghee, dripping, coconut cream etc

High sodium ingredients or high salt include: MSG (monosodium glutamate), sea salt, garlic salt, celery salt, rock salt, vegetable salt, sodium bicarbonate, sodium nitrate, stock cubes, baking powder and baking soda. High sodium would be >120mg per 100g in the sodium content of the nutrition panel.

So if one or more of these ingredients appear in the top 3 ingredients list… then chances are…it’s probably not a great food choice.

Hope this helps…

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