Have you ever looked at the product’s backside and read the food label on it? It is very complicated and mostly seems unnecessary to do but no. You should read the back label of the product to know about what you are consuming and how healthy it is. Since nowadays different chemicals and even food ingredients are affecting our body in many ways, we need to pay attention to the nutrient content of the product. In this blog, Rubina Ratnakar helps you in reading and understanding food labels.
First of all, keep this thing in mind that the front of every product is to attract you and tempt you. Don’t believe blindly in anything written on the product. They are just trying to sell the product to you so be wise and turn the product to read the actual labels at the back.
When you will look at the back of the product you will see a list of ingredients. The ingredients are written on the basis of their quantity from the highest to the lowest. The first three ingredients on the food label are the ones that are used the most. So you should pay attention to the first three ingredients. Our suggestion is to check whether the first three ingredients are any kind of whole foods then the product is healthy. If the product has some type of sugar or hydrogenated oil in the highest quantity then you need to think again before buying.
Another thing you should pay attention to is whether the nutrition information you see is for one serving or the full container. Manufacturers use this trick to make the customers buy the product. There will be 2 or more servings in the full container so you need to multiply the content of a certain ingredient with the number of servings.
Since we look for products that do not contain sugar, manufacturers put different forms of sugar which we are not familiar with. Sugar can be replaced by names like cane sugar, organic raw sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, corn sweetener, and many more.
So the next time you go to buy something keep all these in mind.
Check out our latest blogs on ‘Smoothies Vs Juices‘ and ‘Tracking calorie intake‘ by Rubina Ratnakar.