National Nutrition Week | Do you know how to read food labels?

"Knowing how to cook, choose, and read labels" is the new content added to the "Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022)". Today, let's talk about the importance of "knowing how to read labels".

Only by knowing how to read labels can you find food that meets your needs. Only by knowing yourself and your enemy can you achieve the goal of eating nutritiously and healthily.

First, you need to read the name of the food clearly to avoid confusing the real thing with the fake one. For example, if you only look at the appearance or don’t look carefully, you may think you bought expensive milk for your child, but in fact you only bought a milk drink.

Secondly, you need to look at the ingredient list. The ingredient list requires that it be written in descending order of content, and the earlier the item is listed, the higher the content. Looking at the ingredient list can also help you further confirm whether the food name you see is the same as what you imagined: the raw material of milk should be fresh milk, while milk beverages or reconstituted milk are not.

Third, look at the nutrition label. The nutritional information should list the content of energy, fat, protein, carbohydrates and sodium.

Many experts have talked about the above. It is very important, so I will review it with you.
Here are a few points that you may not have paid enough attention to.

1. It’s not enough to just read the nutrition label, you also need to calculate

On the one hand, the values ​​given on the label are the amount of one serving of food or 100 grams of food. So, if the label shows the nutritional value of 100 grams of food, but there are only 20 grams of food in the package, then you will not get as many nutrients as shown on the label. On the other hand, if the label is marked according to 100 grams, but the food in the package is several hundred grams, then the nutrients you eat will be several times more.

So, it’s not enough to just read the label, you also have to calculate! If the sugar content of a beverage is 5%, if the package is 200 ml, then you will get 10 grams of sugar per bottle; if it is 500 ml, then it becomes 25 grams!

Nutritional composition of a sugary drink (330ml)

2. The NRV (nutrient reference value) on the nutrition label cannot be directly applied to yourself

NRV% means the percentage of these nutrients to a person's daily requirement for the nutrient. In addition to knowing this, we also need to understand that this "person" is a "standard person" who needs 2000Kcal of energy per day and weighs 60 kg. If your energy needs are different, then your NRV will also change accordingly.

For example, if you are an office worker who is lazy, you probably only need 1800Kcal, so your NRV is only 90% of the standard person; if you move bricks or lift weights, you may need 2400Kcal of energy every day, so your NRV is 1.2 times that of the standard person. In addition, the values ​​on the nutrition label are not applicable to children under 4 years old!

3. Nutrition labels are for comparison

It is not good to compare people, but "comparison" is one of the ways to show the importance of nutrition labels. How to compare? Compare similar foods! For example, the nutrition labels of a bottle of beverage and a bag of beef jerky are not very meaningful when compared, because they are not the same type of food. But "comparison" between beverages is necessary.

By comparison, you can immediately tell which of the drinks in front of you is "water" and which is "sugar water"; you can see clearly whether you are drinking a milk drink with a protein content of 1% or milk with a protein content of 3.5%, etc. Therefore, when making a choice among similar foods, don't forget to compare their nutrition labels!

Nutritional composition of a milk drink

Nutritional composition of pure milk

4. Reading nutrition labels is like doing “reading comprehension”

If we look closely at the nutrition facts table on food packaging, the NRV values ​​in the nutrition facts table are usually different. For example, the NRV percentage of energy is 20%, and the NRV of fat may be 30%. In other words, if you want to get enough energy from eating this food, you need to eat 5 servings, but in this case, the fat intake is far exceeded (150%)!

Therefore, those of us who grew up doing "reading comprehension" should be able to do this "question" correctly and read the "implications" of the nutritional table: there is almost no food that can meet all the nutritional needs of the human body alone, so food should be diverse, which is the basis for achieving balanced nutrition!

Nutritional composition of a biscuit

5. Check the production date and shelf life

The production date is relatively straightforward and is usually fine, but there is a lot to know about the shelf life. One of the things to know is that the shelf life is not a red line, nor is it a gold standard for distinguishing whether a food is edible. It is just "the period during which the quality is maintained under the storage conditions specified on the label."

Food within the expiration date should also be carefully inspected after opening; some foods, although not yet expired, may not taste as good as when they were fresh due to improper storage or other reasons, especially foods with a long shelf life, such as packaged milk with a shelf life of up to 1 year. Some foods, approaching or past their expiration date, do not necessarily mean that they are inedible or harmful, such as yogurt, if it is not moldy or tastes bad, and has expired for a few days, it is just a little sour, and it is completely edible.

Emphasizing this point is not to encourage everyone to buy and eat food that is close to its expiration date or has expired, but to hope that everyone can develop a good habit of saving. Especially now, many people are storing food. On the one hand, I hope everyone will store rationally, consume and replace stored food in a timely manner; on the other hand, reasonably handle those foods that are about to reach their expiration date or have expired.

6. Look at the manufacturer or factory of the food

Many people may think that a company's products should be produced by its own factory. In fact, this is not the case. Many foods are processed by other manufacturers.

Don’t be surprised if you see that the manufacturer and product seller on the packaging are not the same company, or even think it’s fake! On the other hand, by looking at the manufacturer, you may get an unexpected surprise: two different brands of food may have very different prices, but they are actually produced by the same factory! So, which one should you buy?

7. Treat ordinary food and special food differently

The above mainly refers to ordinary foods. In fact, there are some "uncommon" foods, such as infant formula, special medical purpose foods and health foods. These special foods also have labels, and you should pay special attention to them when buying and using them! Because the management and standards of these foods are different from those of ordinary foods, I will not elaborate on them here.

Let me briefly highlight the key points for you: Infant formula powder, especially the first stage formula powder for infants aged 1-6 months, cannot be replaced by other foods, let alone "solid drinks" as milk powder! The use of special medical purpose foods should be consulted by a doctor! Health foods are not medicines and cannot replace medicines to treat diseases!

A health food

8. Others

Of course, there is more to the label than what is mentioned above. Food labels include "text, graphics, symbols and all instructions on food packaging". This does not mean that only the content mentioned here is worthy of attention. Here we mainly introduce the content related to nutrition and health and of general concern. Other content is also important for specific groups of people or under specific conditions. For example, people with allergies need to pay special attention to the identification of allergens on the label.

Allergen information of a product

The above are some suggestions on "reading labels", which do not include ingredients that do not have labels, such as bulk, on-site preparation, and fresh foods. If we want to eat healthily, we should also know and understand foods that do not have labels (I will talk about this separately later).

In addition, if you want to eat nutritiously and healthily, just reading the label is not enough. But if you don’t even read the label or don’t understand it, that is definitely not enough! It is never too late to read the label. You can start at any time. In addition to knowing and understanding food, it is also an important step to continuously improve your own nutrition and health literacy!

Have you read the labels today?

References:
[1] GB 7718—2011, National food safety standard: General principles for labeling of prepackaged foods.

[2] GB 28050—2011, National food safety standard: General principles for nutrition labeling of prepackaged foods.

[3] Chinese Nutrition Society. Dietary Guidelines for Chinese Residents (2022). Beijing: People's Medical Publishing House, 2022.

Author: Wang Hongwei | PhD, registered dietitian; member of the Probiotics, Prebiotics and Health Branch of the Chinese Nutrition Society