There is a lot of information on labels, some of it very helpful, some of it not.

The helpful stuff is the:

• Nutrition table with information on calories, protein, carbs, fats, fibre

• Ingredients list

The unhelpful stuff is the:

• Marketing buzz words (low carb, low fat, healthy, etc)

Somewhere in the middle of that we have serving sizes.

Serving Sizes are not official portions, they are just suggestions from the food manufacturer. That being said, they can give us an idea - a starting point when it comes to a controlled portion of packaged foods.

We recommend starting with the suggested serving sizes and adjusting according to what suits you, your goals and the purpose of your food choice.

The Tricky Stuff - The Marketing

Both of the products below use sugar alcohols, which are a non-sugar sweetener (yes the name is confusing, it’s neither sugar or alcohol). Anyway, sugar alcohols don’t have to be listed as carbs which allow the food manufactures to slap a “low sugar” or “low carb” label on their product despite the calories being basically the same as other products.

You can read more about sugar alcohols here - Sugar Alcohols Blog

The products below use slightly different marketing tricks. The wrap states “low carb” but in reality, it’s just a smaller size! And the “lower carb” bread, has more fat which means that the calories are fairly similar to the original version.

Finally here we have a “health halo” product. The manufacturer wants us to believe their product is a healthier version. This often leads us to eat more as we perceive it to be healthy. In reality, remembering the purpose of a choc biscuit is enjoyment, we should really ignore the healthy label and choose what we really enjoy and this can actually mean we eat less calories!

The helpful stuff

The nutrition labels are great for comparing similar products. In Australia we always get the values per 100grams which gives us that nice, easy, consistent number to compare products.

If we want to compare foods that don’t have labels, Food Standard Australia have a searchable database called NUTTAB which can help us make comparisons like these:

When comparing foods, don’t fall into the trap of getting too numbers focussed. Just because something is lower calorie, doesn’t necessarily make it better. We also need to factor in protein, plants, fibre, overall health and what’s going to keep us fuller for longer.

As we get better at reading labels, finding nutritional information and comparing similar products, we can make some easy switches which help progress us towards our goals with minimal effort. Either reducing total calories for similar foods, or increasing our protein and plant intake for similar calories.

We’ve got a blog going through more helpful stuff on labels:

Reading Labels and Tracking a Meal Blog

The Health Halo

Gluten-free, low-fat, sugar-free, raw, paleo, organic, high-protein…

These are all buzzwords that food marketers use to lead a consumer to believe that they are purchasing a healthier product.

These foods can be categorised into what we call: The Health Halo.

 Often we don’t perceive ‘health’ foods as having a caloric value. Have you ever heard anyone say: “I can’t lose weight but I eat healthy?”

 Researchers found that when health-conscious people consumed food products labelled with the aforementioned buzzwords, not only did they eat more, but they also reduced their physical activity.

More calories in, less calories out. Not ideal if trying to move towards an energy balance that achieves a calorie deficit for fat loss.

A study compared M&Ms and granola. Most of us would label granola as the healthier and less indulgent option, yet both foods are similar in caloric density. Researchers found that the participants underestimated the calorie content of the granola by 28% and actually overestimated the calorie content of the M&Ms by 9%. This led to an overconsumption of calories with granola.  

It can be difficult to tell the difference between healthier products and false claims. This is why it’s more important than ever to be aware, so that you can make choices that are aligned with you and your goals.

This is where reading labels comes in handy.

Don’t fall victim to the Health Halo.