The Diet & Food Labels

Your Diet & Food

We all know the importance of having a nutritional diet but how do we know what's in the food we eat, how many calories are in it, what vitamins, how much protein, what is the salt content and carbohydrates?

Fortunately just about every packaged food must now contain food labels that show us the nutritional values of food. These labels provide us with the necessary information of the content and this is usually "per serving" or so many grams, but the labels are not always clear and sometimes confusing particularly for elderly people.

Serving size

The serving size is usually based on the amount of food a person would typically eat; this of course may not be the serving amount you would normally eat so attention has to be paid to the serving size.

The package will normally tell you how many servings it holds and as a guide you can then tell how much you actually eat. As a typical guide the nutritional information on the packaging relates to a serving, so for example if the package states that per serving is 200 calories and the package holds four servings, if you were to consume the whole package you would have eaten 800 calories.

This is one area where some people may get confused in thinking that because the package states 200 calories then the entire package is 200 calories, it is not.

Nutrients

The nutrient section on the package will list all nutrients within the package by the percentage of the recommend daily amount. Labels will have the recommended daily amount based on a set amount of calories per day such as a 2,000 and 2,500 calorie diet.

Ingredients

Every food product should include an ingredient list on the packaging; ingredients will normally be listed from the largest to the smallest amount by weight. This means that the ingredient first on the list will be found more in the food than the last on the list.

Claims on the label

Some labels will claim to be low in cholesterol or low in fat, these can only be put on the food if they meet certain standards per serving such as:

Fat free or sugar free - The food must contain less than 0.5g of fat.

Low fat - There must be 3g or less of fat in the food.

Reduced fat or reduced sugar - The food must contain less than 25% fat or sugar content.

Cholesterol free - The product must contain less than 2mg of cholesterol and 2g or less of saturated fats.

Reduced cholesterol - The product must contain less than 25% cholesterol and not more than 2g of saturated fat.

Calorie free - The food must contain less than 5 calories.

Low calorie - The product must contain less than 40 calories.

Light or Lite - The product must contain 1/3 fewer calories or 50% less fat.

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The Diet & Food Labels

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