Food labels: how manufacturers disguise the baddies
Posted by kathryn in Labels & advertising
Most of us know to reduce the fat, sugar and sodium in our diet. However these can be hidden away in the ingredients list.
For example, while “salt” may be listed at the end of the ingredients, the product may still contain a lot of sodium, The salt is simply disguised as other ingredients. Similarly fats and sugars also often travel incognito.
The many names for fat:
- margarine
- butter
- vegetable oil
- lard
- shortening
- full cream milk powder
- mono-, di- and triglycerides
- hydrogenated vegetable oil
The many names for sugar
- sugar
- honey
- malt
- sucrose
- molasses
- glucose syrup
- fructose
- dextrose
- corn syrup
- golden syrup
The many names for sodium include:
- salt
- sodium chloride
- yeast extract
- soy sauce
- MSG
Ingredients like honey, molasses, yeast extract and soy sauce all add flavour to the product. However, they’re often also used to hide the true nature of what’s being added.
Be sceptical. Use the nutrition information panel to compare the total amounts of fat, sugar and salt per 100gm. This is a more reliable guide to how low or high a product is in fat, sugar and sodium.
24 October, 2007
Comments
Great, great post. I feel like Sherlock Holmes reading ingredient labels, so this will help me decipher some of what they put in our food. Very, very handy – thanks so much for posting it.
Cheers!
Thanks AV. Labels are not very user-friendly. All the good information is in a tiny font, while all the marketing rubbish is splashed across the box in large letters and pictures. Food labels are one of my favourite topics, so I’ll be coming back to that topic!
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