I often feel desperately sorry for the public as I am sometimes caught out by food labels and am forced to study the fine print and even have to contact the manufacturers to find out the real story.

For example:

There is a newly launched ice cream on a stick which is made up of chocolate coated vanilla ice cream. The packaging states that it is a “lite” product and goes on to say that it has 0% fat and 0% cane sugar Now, you need to ask yourself if chocolate covered vanilla ice cream can really be fat free and sugar free? If you continue reading on the front of the packaging, it adds in smaller writing, that there is 0% cane sugar in the chocolate. Now the question you have to ask yourself is why does it add this statement if it just said above that the ice cream has 0% fat and cane sugar. The trick is that the ice-cream part is fat free and sugar free whereas the chocolate part is only sugar free. This can be confirmed by looking at the nutritional information on the back, which states (in rather small print of course) that this ice cream has 11.3g of fat (equivalent of just more than 2 tsp of oil) and 186Calories (equivalent of 2 ½ slices of bread). Also, although this product contains no sucrose (cane sugar), it contains other sugars (i.e. polydextrose, polyfructose, etc), that have the same calories as normal sucrose. Whew!  This one initially fooled even me!

Another example is the spray olive oil, which is used instead of spray ‘n cook. The packaging on this product says that it is a fat free product and that the fat content is indeed 0%/. However, if you spray some onto a surfact, you will in fact see pure oil running across the surface. Closer inspection of the label (fine print of course) says that the fat content is 0% if you spray for 1/3 of a second. The joke is it is impossible to spray for 1/3 of a second!

Arming yourself to cross the minefield

• Become a skeptic. Be on the look out for products that make statements that can’t possibly be true. For example, a product that states “no sugar added” might already have sugar in the natural form, eg fruit juice already contains fructose.

• Think what the label is not saying i.e. Fat free does for instance not mean sugar free and the product might still be high in calories.  Cholesterol free does not mean fat free. A bottle of vegetable oil may be cholesterol free but is still a 100% fat product.

• Read the front of the packaging briefly and the back slowly and carefully. The most important information is often the smallest print usually hidden in the folds of the wrapping.

• Ingredients have to listed in order of weight. This means that the biggest (by weight) ingredient comes first on the list and the smallest ingredient is last. Therefore if the food you are trying to avoid is in the top 5 ingredients then you should probably be avoiding that product.

• If in doubt, contact the manufactures. Contact details should always be on the back of products.

• Look out for disguises. Learn aliases; eg. fat can be called hydrogentated fat, shortening, lard, etc. Sugar can be called sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, cane sugar, corn syrup, sorbitol, etc.

• Be ready for chemical warfare. On a positive note, many manufacturers seem to be trying to make products without adding flavourants, colorants, preservatives, etc.

• Be prepared to pay the price. A product that is naturally high in an ingredient may be overcompensated with another ingredient to make up for the loss of one of the main ingredients. For example, sugar is a big part of chocolate and therefore diabetic chocolate usually has more fat than regular chocolate to make up for the decrease in sugar.

• You still need to live. Don’t get too caught up in label reading. Sometimes you need to just enjoy a product for its taste, ability to fill a hole or for its convenience.

Just for interest

• All vegetable oils including sunflower,canola, olive (except coconut or palm kernel oil) are choleterol free. However canola and olive oils have positive effects on blood cholesterol levels where as sunflower oil has neutral effects on cholesterol levels.

• The body breaks down all of the above aliases for sugar into glucose and therefore they all supply the same amount of energy. The only differences are that depending on the complexity of the product, they are broken down at different speeds. This is why diabetic products generally contain fructose as fructose takes longer than sucrose (cane sugar) to be broken down to glucose and therefore has a more gradual effect on blood sugar levels.