Deciphering food labels

There are initiatives to provide the population with knowledge about food and nutrition and, thus, to be able to follow a healthy and balanced diet. Being able to understand a label and compare it to other products is the first step in this initiative.

Food label

On a label we can find more or less information, explanations, images or claims, but there is a regulation that specifies what minimum information a product must provide. It should always include:

• The list of ingredients.
• The allergens that the food may contain.
• The net weight of the product.
• Instructions for use and storage if necessary.
• The physical characteristics of the product or treatment to which it has been subjected (frozen, concentrated, smoked ...).
• The name and address of the manufacturer.
• The best before date or expiration date.

On the other hand, there is optional or mandatory publication information such as nutritional composition tables where carbohydrate, fat content are specified ... These tables are only required to be indicated if the labeling mentions the content of a certain nutrient attributing a benefit to it as “Source of…” or “low content of…”.

Allergies and intolerances

It is especially important to check the labeling when you have an allergy or food. Since 2008 there is legislation that requires specifying on the labeling the presence of products that generally have a lower tolerance. These are: cereals that contain gluten and its derivatives, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, milk, nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecan nuts, Brazil nuts, pistachios, macadamia nuts or Australia) , celery, mustard, sesame, sulfur dioxide and sulphites above 10mg / Kg or 10mg / L expressed as SO2, lupins and mollusks, and all derivatives and products based on any of those mentioned.

Meaning of nomenclatures

To understand a label we must understand the words we read and that is not always easy in the case of chemical compounds with long and complicated names. Generally, long or strange names for the population create mistrust, but this does not mean that it should be a harmful substance. In addition, the same product can have different nomenclatures or be expressed through codes.

Tricks to understand food labels

Labeling wants the consumer to understand the product information well and buy it. For this reason, the claims and descriptions on the packaging should clarify what the content is and generate confusion. In order to better assess a food, we can look at information such as:

• The ingredient list: vegetable oil. Popular belief says that vegetable oils are good and animal oils are bad. This is not like this. To begin with, nothing is good or bad, it all depends on the dose. There are vegetable oils (olive) that are very interesting for health, while there are saturated vegetable oils that are not so advisable (palm or coconut). If a brand does not specify what type of vegetable oil it is, we can think that it is not olive or possibly sunflower since, otherwise, it would be interested in advertising it.
• The description of the product: we must pay attention to what exactly the description of the product indicates, regardless of what the images of the packaging or the color of the food show. For example, a chocolate shake is not the same as a chocolate-flavored shake that may not contain chocolate, only the aroma. A soy yogurt is not the same as a soy dessert, since the second is soy-based while the first is a milk-based yogurt, to which soy is added, and therefore contains much less quantity soy.
• The claims of the product: that the labeling advertises a characteristic of the product does not mean that another that does not do it, does not contain it. For example, some labels indicate that tuna is a "natural source of" but we must bear in mind that all tuna are rich in omega 3, whether or not it indicates it. Another example is to indicate that a product does not contain cholesterol when it is a natural fact.

The order of the ingredients

The ingredient list specifies the components of the product from highest to lowest quantity. In other words, the order of the list is not random but ranges from more to less grams of a specific ingredient. Knowing the ordering criteria we can see how, for example, the main component of many bakery and chocolate products is sugar over flour, eggs or even the cocoa of a chocolate bar.

What you should know:

• Reading the label carefully is essential to be able to know the characteristics of the product and to be able to compare it with other similar ones.
• Long and complicated names do not have to generate mistrust and nutritional claims are not always a point in favor of the product.
• The list of ingredients is detailed from highest to lowest quantity.