How to Read Food Labels

Walk down the aisle of any supermarket and you will find that almost every packaged product carries a label full of numbers and lists. These labels can look confusing at first, but learning to read them is one of the most useful shopping skills you can develop. A few minutes spent understanding the information on a packet can help you compare products, avoid unwanted ingredients and make choices that suit your needs.

The most detailed part of the label is usually the nutrition panel. This is the small table that lists how much energy the food provides, along with amounts of fat, sugar, salt and other nutrients. The figures are often given in two ways: per one hundred grams of the product, and per serving. The per hundred gram column is the most useful for comparing two similar products, because it puts them on an equal footing regardless of packet size.

Energy is measured in units called calories, or sometimes in kilojoules. It is easy to assume that a low calorie figure automatically means a food is healthy, but this is not always the case. A product might be low in calories yet high in salt, or contain very little of the vitamins and fibre your body needs. The number of calories is only one piece of a much larger picture.

The ingredients list tells its own story. By law, ingredients are written in order of weight, from the most to the least. This simple rule reveals a great deal: if sugar appears near the top of the list, the product contains a large amount of it, even if the front of the packet suggests otherwise. Reading the first few ingredients often tells you more about a food than the pictures and slogans on the front.

Many shoppers are surprised by how much salt and sugar hide in everyday products. Foods that do not taste sweet, such as bread, sauces and ready meals, can still contain a surprising amount of sugar, while savoury snacks are often high in salt. Some labels use a colour-coded system, with red, amber and green marks, to show at a glance whether a food is high, medium or low in these nutrients. A quick look at these colours can guide a busy shopper in seconds.

Dates on packaging are a further source of confusion. A use-by date is about safety and should be taken seriously, because eating a food after this date could make you ill. A best-before date, by contrast, is about quality rather than safety; a food may be past its best but still be perfectly safe to eat. Understanding this difference can help reduce the amount of good food that is thrown away. With a little practice, reading a label becomes second nature and puts you firmly in control of what you buy.