How to Read Nutrition Labels - Part 2 Avoid the Jazz

Watch out for the jazz. Not the music, the words that food companies slap on to food labels to help us to form all sorts of ideas about the contents inside. When it comes down to it, these words rarely mean anything and whilst they are not totally misleading, they are really not far off. Here are a few of my favourites;

'Natural' – this word means nothing when it comes to labeling. There are no restrictions as to what it can and can’t be applied to. A muesli bar that contains 5 teaspoons of sugar can be called ‘natural’ because, you know, at some stage, before it was heated and treated and refined, that sugar was in a sugar cane plantation. And it has oats in it.

'Nature Identical' – this too, is really non-descript. ‘Nature identical flavors’ are chemically identical to natural flavorings but are prepared or extracted using chemical methods. ‘Natural’? Nuh-uh.

'Fat Free' – now this one is sneaky. A lot of the time when this word is put on to labels, it is applied to foods that never had a fat content to begin with. Like rice. People read this and think 'fat=bad. Rice=fat free=eat 3 cups a day'. Good plan for an ironman, not a great plan for a truck driver. Then there are the times when this is applied to foods like yoghurt. Lots of processes have to happen to take the fat out of the yoghurt. Thats alls i'm sayin'.


'Sugar Free' – BEWARE! Maltitol, sorbitol, aspartame, saccharin and sucralose, just to name a few. One word to describe these chemicals – rubbish!

And then of course there are the things that are ‘with added’ - like ‘with added calcium’…written on a bottle of orange juice. Or ‘with added fibre’ on the whitest bread you have ever seen. Puh-lease!

So when i'm looking at food labels I look at the ingredient listing and the nutrition table and disregard all the buzz words written on it. If it is fat free or natural, all will be revealed when you real the important facts on the back of the pack.

How did you go with reading ingredient lists? Next up is a crash course in macronutrients (Protein, carbohydrates, fat, water and fibre) and how I quickly assess a food by looking at the nutrition panel.

Enjoy your weekends kids. Over and out.