Sunday 27 July 2014

How to read a product label?


How many times you want to buy certain product but you aren't sure if its healthy or not. So here is a few guidelines of how to do it.

First of all you have to read the ingredients. Forget about checking the calories. Check the ingredients first and THEN the calories! So lets analyse those tea biscuits in the first picture:

Ingredients: Wheat flour, Vegtetable oil, Wholemeal wheat Flour, Sugar, Sugar syrup, Raising agents, Salt, Dried Skimmed milk.

So ingredients are written from highest to lowest content. So for example if in the first 3 ingredient your product have sugar, flour  and vegetable oil is not good. In this case ALL our ingredients are flour and sugar! ridiculous you would put this in your body if you are trying to lose weight!

Then after this is no point to keep checking the calories but lets do it:
Calories per biscuit: (70)
Fat: 3.2
Carbohydrates: 9.3
Sugars: 2.5
fibre: 0.5
Protein: 1.1

So 70 calories is low BUT being realistic you don't eat only one biscuit. But after checking calories you have to analyse the fats, proteins, carbs, sugar and fibre.

When you buy bread or any other product you have to make sure that the grams of fibre are higher than the grams of sugar.

At least 5g of fiber makes a product high in nutrition for you. Is just a guideline which applies to most of the products we consume. But the best products are the ones which doesn't have any labels: fruit and veg for example



3 comments:

  1. Hi Ursula, I'm from Colombia but I'm currently living in London. I follow you in Instagram and I read your posts every day I love them!. I've got a question related to a product label that I found in Holland and Barrett and I would like to use it to prepare white sauces but I'm not sure if it's healthy or not. Here are the ingredients:

    OAT ALTERNATIVE CREAM (OATLY)
    Oat base (water, oats* 10%), rapeseed oil*, palm oil*, emulsifier: rapeseed lecithin, stabiliser: xanthan, sea salt.
    *Organic
    Free from milk protein, lactose and soya

    Thanks :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Lina. Thank you for reading my blog. I wouldn't eat it if I was trying to lose weight. Is made of carbs and oils. If you are trying to maintain your body fat is not too bad in moderation. But when making sauces try to go for your own ingredients. Natural ingredients. I hope this helped. If you have further questions. Do not hesitate asking me.

      Delete
  2. Hi Lina. Thank you for reading my blog. I wouldn't eat it if I was trying to lose weight. Is made of carbs and oils. If you are trying to maintain your body fat is not too bad in moderation. But when making sauces try to go for your own ingredients. Natural ingredients. I hope this helped. If you have further questions. Do not hesitate asking me.

    ReplyDelete