Choosing fit food

Press, 8 June 1989, Page 12

Choosing fit food

“Fresh is best” does not apply to all foods in our diets. A proportion of our healthiest foods land in the supermarket trolley encased in packaging and well decorated with labelling. It is the label which carries the clue to choosing healthy packaged foods.

To master the art of label reading and become an expert in choosing your best foods, try this four-step plan: 1. Know which ingredients you do not want in your packaged, commercial products. 2. Troubleshoot for these less desirable ingredients before bothering to read the rest of product labels.

3. Look for beneficial ingredients in products: wholegrains, fruit, vegetables, lean or low fat items. 4. Check the product that resembles something you already enjoy eating.

UNDERSTANDING INGREDIENTS ■ Apart from the name of the product and some words to set your taste buds going, the label will show a list of ingredients for the product. This list can range from a just “apples” on a can of apples to a myriad of chemical names on some labels. You might be surprised how many different ingredient names for fat, sugar and salt “hide” the real thing. A toasted muesli package might list its sugar content under many names in the same product: honey, glucose, syrup, raw sugar. Ingredients on labels are listed in order of quantity, starting with the largest down to the smallest. If fats, oil, glucose, sugar or other high-fat or high-sugar ingredients are listed near the beginning of the list, the food is high in these.

When you are trying to achieve a diet low in fats, particularly saturated fats, low in sugar and high in fibre, the latter two are easier to define. See list below for names for sugar. In my next column we will look at fibre. Fats are more difficult to understand. Saturated fat may be “hidden” in the form of coconut oil, lard, beef fat and commercial margarine in a vast array of foods. These particular fats are cheaper and have better keeping qualities than the polyunsaturated margarines and oils were are recommended to eat. Frozen meals, fried takeaways, snack foods, biscuits, cakes and chocolates can contain large amounts of saturated fats. Unless the label states “polyunsaturated,” any vegetable oil, margarine, shortening or “fats”

should be assumed to be largely saturated. However, the oil used in mayonnaises and canned fish is usually polyunsaturated. Other suitable oils include those high in monounsaturated fats — olive, rapeseed or peanut oils. Nevertheless, it remains difficult for the average person to establish both the type and amount of fat used in foods. The lists below offer some guidance. CLUES TO THE AMOUNT Whereas product labels must list the ingredients, they do not have to specify the amounts of each except to show the order of quantity. However, many labels do give nutrients “per serving” or per IOOg. This may be for protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre and various other nutrients. The greatest value in having this information on the label is for comparing different varieties of a particular food. You see which is lowest fat, which is highest fibre. It can be difficult to make sense of the numbers. For example, 4g of fat per IOOg of crisp-

YOUR FOOD STYLE

JANICE BREMER DIETITIAN

breads sounds a lot of fat. but then consider that one crispbread may weigh only sg. This makes the fat content of one crispbread only 0.2 g, which is negligible and irrelevant in counting your fat intake.

The number of calories listed per serving or IOOg is dependent on the amounts of fat, carbohydrate and protein in the food. Fat provides the most calories so foods high in fat are highest in calories. Thirty grams of cheese may contain 9g of fat and 120 calories, whereas the same weight of bread (30g) may contain 0.6 g of fat and only 60 calories. More about the arithmetic of labels and how to work out the place for packaged food in your diet will be in my next column.

Also remember the rest of your diet. There is little point in spending hours deciphering labels on packaged food if you are still spooning butter on to your potatoes, having meat pies or yummy cakes for lunch and fried takeaways or hamburgers once a week.