You must have noticed a label on back, side or top of any pre-packed food article. These labels include nutritional information related to the particular product like amount of energy, fat, carbohydrate, protein, sugars or salt.
Let’s know in detail what a food label is… and how important it is for a consumer …
What is food label?
Food label is a panel of information found on a packaged food. This contains a variety of information about the nutritional value of the food item. There is certain piece of standard information available on every list of labels, including portion size, number of calories, gram of fat, nutrient content, and a list of ingredients.
The information food label provides help people to make a better choice. If you looking at disease specific nutrient or want to consume high content of a particular nutrient. Food label gives you all accurate information. For example: sodium restriction, intake of fat, sugar or healthy nutrient such as calcium, vitamin-c all can be checked before purchase.
The nutrition information panel also provides a comparison between the nutrient profile of similar products. This helps to you choose the best out of all. The information provided on a food label is mostly, as per 100 gram or sometimes per portion.
“Use by” and “Best before”
‘Use by’ is a deadline giving for consumption of food with a particular shelf life. Like a pack of butter milk with a shelf life of less than six months must say ‘Use by’ or ‘Best before’ date.
There is a slight difference between both these terms ‘best before’ date refers to the quality of the food. The product stored in the recommended way will hold all the nutritional quality until that date. Whereas ‘best before’ date, gives a time duration when a food product is of best quality. It may still be safe to eat certain foods after the date also but, they may have lost quality and some nutritional value.
“Use by” set a deadline for food products. Once the deadline is reached it should not be consumed for safety and health benefit. Selling products after the ‘use-by’ date is a punishable offence. Mostly all perishable products like dairy products or animal flesh have a ‘use-by’ date.
Some foods carry their manufactured or packed date, rather than a ‘use-by’ date, so you can check how fresh the food is. For example, bread and milk can be labeled with a ‘baked on’ or ‘packed on’ date.
Always check the ‘use-by’ or ‘best before’ date when you buy food.
Always keep an eye on the ‘use-by’ or ‘best before’ dates. Make it a habit to look at the food labels. Take a right decision and don’t just eat any food that looks good or smells ok after passing its ‘use-by’ date.
Food label and list of ingredients
In every food label the list of ingredients are always arranged in a descending order. The ingredient with highest content is always listed first followed by rest. According to Fruits and Vegetables Regulation if a product contains a five percent or less of any ingredient, it does not have to be listed in the food label panel. But if a product contains many multi-component ingredients which are less than five percent, it comes under ‘composite’ ingredients. As an example, a packed product with lemon pickle will say “lemon Pickle” as an ingredient rather than specifying every ingredient in pickle like oil, vinegar, red chilly, turmeric powder, salt. Remember the content of additives or allergens is not considered under this term. It is mandatory to mark the exact percentage no matter how small the amount.
Nutritional claim labels
Always remember – the information on a package is not true.
There are many catchy nutritional labels available on the packed products. Don’t be misled by these labeling tricks and traps. Some common term like ‘light’ doesn’t necessarily mean low fat or energy. ‘Light’ can be used for light color, texture. Many products also claim for ‘low cholesterol’ ‘zero cholesterol ‘or ‘no cholesterol’. They might be low in cholesterol level but can be high in fat content. Sometimes it’s the way of representation where a customer gets trapped. If an item claims 93 percent of sugar free or fat free, always think the product actually contains 7 percent.