Tips for Label Reading!

So you’re grocery shopping, trying not to run the person in front of you over with your trolley. They’re just standing there, reading the food packaging and comparing products. I assume alot of you do that (or pretend to ?!) so what are you really looking at?
Things to look out for when reading the Ingredients List:

**Ingredients high in sugar include fruit concentrate, maltose, honey, syrup, molasses, malt extract, brown/simple/castor sugar, glucose and fructose.

**Ingredients high in saturated fat (“bad fat”) include animal fat, hydrogenated fat, butter, palm oil, shortening, ghee, lard, dripping, coconut oil, full cream milk solids, coconut cream & copha.

**High fibre ingredients wholegrain, bran, wheatmeal, wholewheat, wheatbran, psyllium, high maize and rolled oats.

When reading the Nutrition Information Panel (which I always find covered with a massive sticker with the arabic translation! ), keep the following in mind:

  • Use the per 100g (or100ml) column when comparing different products.
  • Look for products which provide:
    **Fat – Less than 10g per 100g. Exceptions:
    Choose milk less than 2g/100g
    Choose yoghurt less than 4g/100g
    Choose cheese less than 15g/100g
    **Sugars – Less than 10g per 100g. Exceptions: Choose cereals with dried fruit less than 20g/100g.
    **Sodium – Less than 350mg per 100g
    **Fibre – More than 3g per serve. Exceptions:
    Choose breads more than 5g/100g
    Choose cereals more than 9g/100g

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