Reading between the lines

Trying to decipher what's really in all those packets, cans or jars on the supermarket shelves can be mind-boggling. To make good, healthy choices for your family, you need to know what's in the product.

The trouble is that it's so confusing. The law does require that a label should give the name of the food, and if necessary, a description. The ingredients must be listed in order of proportion with the largest (or heaviest) first. The weight (or volume) must also be included and any additives - these will be listed as E numbers. A date mark should also be included. A best before date is used for foods that aren't very perishable, but more perishable foods such as yoghurt are labelled use by.

Low fat - there's no law about what this means. Although low-fat spread contains less fat than margarine or butter, it's still high in fat.

Low-calorie - in order to claim food is low-calorie, it must have no more than 40 calories per serving and per 100g (100ml). Most nutritional information labels list the kcals (calories) per serving and per 100g, so read the small print.

Contains vitamins and minerals - this claim can only be made if a normal serving of the food contains at least one-sixth of the recommended daily amount.

Low-cholesterol - these foods must contain no more than 0.005 per cent cholesterol. This label must also tell you about the polyunsaturated fat content, so making it extremely complicated.

Manufacturers have tactics for disguising the true contents of a product, for example:
Orange-flavoured - means some (not much) real orange has been used.
Orange flavour means no real orange.
No added sugar usually means no added sucrose. Honey, syrup, fructose, glucose, fruit juice or malt on the label means there's extra sweetening.
No artificial sweeteners - the product may still contain sugar.