So you've decided that even with the festive period coming up, you will try and make better choices when buying food, so as not to mess up your diet and weight loss journey totally. But how do you do that ?

One way is to read food labels. Food labels, or nutrition lables can help you choose between products, and keep a check on the amount of foods high in fat, sald and added sugars that you are eating.

These labels usually include information on energy (calories), protein, carbohydrate and fat. They may provide additional information on saturated fat, sugars, sodium, salt and fibre. All nutrition information is provided per 100 grams and sometimes per portion of the food.

How do I know if a food is high in fat, saturated fat, sugar or salt?

There are guidelines to tell you if a food is high in fat, saturated fat, salt or sugar or not. These are:

Total fat
High: more than 20g of fat per 100g
Low: 3g of fat or less per 100g

Saturated fat
High: more than 5g of saturated fat per 100g
Low: 1.5g of saturated fat or less per 100g 

Sugars
High: more than 15g of total sugars per 100g
Low: 5g of total sugars or less per 100g

Salt
High: more than 1.5g of salt per 100g (or 0.6g sodium)
Low: 0.3g of salt or less per 100g (or 0.1g sodium)

But except for the nutritional value, it's also important to know how to read the ingredients list.

Most pre-packed food products also have a list of ingredients on the packaging or on an attached label. The ingredients list can also help you work out how healthy the product is.

Ingredients are listed in order of weight, so the main ingredients in the packaged food always come first. That means that if the first few ingredients are high-fat ingredients, such as cream, butter or oil, then the food in question is a high-fat food. With that in mind, check ingredient lists to see where sugar appears. Limit foods that mention sugar in the first few ingredients. That means it's a very sugary food. Sugar has different names, so it might also be called high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, sucrose, or glucose.

If you see the ingredients list and don’t understand half of it, it just means the food is overly processed which is not good for your health. If you must buy packaged foods, make sure to buy items that are wholly natural and beneficial to the body.

Another important aspect is serving size.

The nutrition label always lists a serving size, which is an amount of food, such as 1 cup of cereal, two cookies, or five pretzels. Or sometimes it mentions how many servings per pack. In that case, a bit of math comes in handy.

So if you eat a whole pack when the serving size says 3, then you have to treble all nutritional values on the label to know exactly what you have eaten.

You will also find a mention of % of Daily Allowance. Personally I would ignore that, as it takes an average male or female adult and bases itself on current government recommendations.

And remember, low fat isn't always the healthiest option. When you see a low fat product, just check the ingredients list. It generally will show lots of processed ingredients to make it taste good. And lots of times also contains sugar, or sugar substitutes. So be careful.

 

If you need help with reading food labels, your diet, or your fitness, feel free to contact me, Anne Iarchy, Personal Trainer North London and Barnet, on 07880627944 or email me at anne@barnetpersonaltrainer.co.uk