Understanding food labels

Food labels contain so much information, it’s often difficult to know what you should be looking for and what it all means. If you want to improve your diet and make sure that you’re eating healthily, it’s crucial that you take the time to check the nutritional information on the packaging.

What should I look for in the nutritional information?

Remember: to keep your diet healthy you are looking for foods low in salt and saturated fat. The table below shows the information you should look at per 100g – aim to choose foods with measurements in the low bracket.

Per 100g look for:

What else should I look for?

Red means stop... and think
Traffic light labels make it easier and quicker to make healthy choices. At a glance, you can see if a product is low, medium or high in fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in 100g of food. Foods with green lights are the healthiest options to go for, while foods with amber lights are okay to eat most of the time. Red lights on food indicate that they should be eaten only occasionally.

Salt watch
Most adults are eating more salt than the recommended maximum of 6g of salt a day. You may see ‘sodium' listed on the label rather than salt. To convert sodium into salt just multiply the measurement given by 2.5.

Spot hidden sugars
Sugar is not always listed in the ingredients list as ‘sugar'. Look out for the following terms; sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose, honey, palm sugar, hydrolysed starch, syrup and invert sugar. Remember, the higher up on the ingredients list sugar is, the more added sugar is in the product.

Reduced fat means it's healthier, right?
Take care when buying products that are labelled as ‘reduced fat' as it can mean a very different thing to ‘low fat' and might not be as healthy as it sounds. Low fat means a product has 3g or less fat per 100g while reduced fat means a product is 25 per cent lower in fat than the standard product.

Often these foods were very high in fat to start with, for example mayonnaise, crisps and cheese, so you still need to limit how much you eat as the reduced fat version is likely to still be pretty high in fat.

Watch your portion sizes
A manufacturer's idea of a portion might be smaller than yours. A product may look healthy, but even with healthier choices if you eat large portions, you may end up consuming more calories than you need.

How will I know if a product contains trans fats?
Unfortunately, you will not always see trans fats listed on the ingredients list. To know if they are in the foods you are eating, look out for the words 'partially hydrogenated fat or oil'. The higher up the list they are, the more the product contains.

Date marking
Keep a close eye on the ‘use by dates' and ‘best before dates' on products and carefully follow the storage information and instructions on the label.

It is not safe to consume foods after the ‘use by' date, even if they look or smell okay, as they could pose a risk to your health.

The ‘best before' date is found on foods that can be kept for longer and products may be safe to eat after the best before date (with the exception of eggs), but they will not be at their best in terms of taste, appearance or nutritional value.

Why is there a lion on my egg?
Worries about salmonella food poisoning make many people concerned about the safety of eating eggs. The Lion mark, found on eggs and egg boxes, indicates that the eggs have been produced to the strictest food safety standards and all the hens have been vaccinated against salmonella.

What does ‘organic' mean?
In the UK, food labelled as organic must meet strict production standards. For a product to be labelled as organic, at least 95% of the ingredients need to be grown organically.

Look out for the certification symbol or number on the food label that confirms a product is organic. But remember, organic butter, for example, will have the same amount of saturated fat as any other butter. You still need to check the nutritional information just as you do with conventionally produced foods.

More information

Visit our Publications section to order our:
Guide to food labelling booklet
Cut the saturated fat wallchart.