All foods come with a nutrition information panel and a list of ingredients. When it comes to deciphering the panel it pays to keep it simple by focusing on what are the most important components to achieving your healthy weight.
Nutrition Information Panel
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Per 100g |
Per serve |
|
1) Fat - total 2) Fibre |
< 10g >5g <350mg |
Lowest kl/calories |
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Fat: This is the main priority. Fat is very calorie dense and not filling so it is important to keep it to a minimum in order to achieve a healthy weight. This stands true no matter whether it’s good healthy unsaturated fat or the harmful saturated fat. The eat fit guideline suggests less than ten grams per hundred grams, so 10%.
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Dietary Fibre: Fibre gives the feeling of fullness. Eating more than five grams per hundred grams at all meals will decrease the total portion of food needed to full you up and keep you full for a longer period of time.
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Energy: Compare your low fat/high fibre products and flavors and choose the one lowest in kilojoules/calories per serve. This will mean it is lower in fat and added sugar.
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Sodium: Too much salt in the diet can increase blood pressure and is harmful to heart health. Processed foods are very high in sodium so it is important to choose foods with less than 350mg/100g.
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Added sugar: Check the ingredient list rather than the Nutrition Information Panel (NIP). Sugars occur naturally in all sorts of foods and they are good for us so it is the added sugars you want to avoid. The NIP does not discriminate between added or natural sugars so it can be difficult to tell whether a food is naturally higher in sugars or whether they have been added. Choose foods that don’t have sugars in the first three ingredients on the ingredient list. If it is a product you have only a small amount of e.g. sauce, take this into account.
Ingredients list
The ingredients are listed in descending order of weight from most to least in the recipe. Be aware that words such as sucrose, maltose, dextrose, glucose, corn syrup, honey, disaccharides, fructose, lactose, and monosaccharide are all sugar. Also see that foods that contain coconut, coconut milk, coconut cream, lard, milk solids, hydrogenated fat, kremelta, dripping, shortening or if they end in ‘oil’ are all fats and if they are present as one of the first three ingredients the food is likely to be high in fat.
Supermarket shopping techniques for weight loss here
Promotional words to be aware of:
Baked: May be high in added fat (check for less than 5 grams of fat per 100g)
Light: Can be referring to the weight, color or taste of the product not the fat content
Natural: Doesn’t mean that it is healthy - sugar is natural.
No added sugar: Can still contain natural occurring sugar. Fruit juice with no added sugar can still contain 5- 6 teaspoons of sugar per glass
Cholesterol free: Can still be high in total fat