It pays to read and to understand the
ingredients list and the nutrients information (NI) panel printed on the
product. This will help you o evaluate if a health food is really beneficial as
it advertises itself to be. Here are few tips:
What
to look for?
1.
Serving Size: This is based on, but not necessarily
equal to, food amounts customarily eaten at one time eg: 30gm of bread or 200ml
milk. They can also refer to a single serving of a food group like grains, vegetables
or fruits. Sometimes, the NI panel shows calories and fat per serving and not
per 100 gm of the product. This procedure may make the buyer think they are
buying a lower calorie/fat product.
2.
Calories and fat per serving: Knowing how much calorie/fat
one serving provides lets you estimate how much you might consume in one
sitting. Another option is to locate calories and fat per 100gm, approximate
the amount (serving) you might consume in one sitting and calculate the
calories/fat for that amount.
3.
Percentage of RDA (recommended dietary allowances) supplied: To decide if the product will make a significant contribution to
your dietary needs of a particular nutrient, say calcium or fibre or iron, find
out what percentage of that nutrient’s RDA the total product amount supplied
you with.
Example: If you are a woman looking to
improve her calcium intake, you must first know that the RDA for calcium for
women is 400mg/day. Now, if your packaged fruit juice contains 15 mg of calcium
per 100 ml and comes in a 250ml pack, then you are going to derive about 38mg
calcium provided you are a sole consumer of the pack. And, 38 mg is about 9.5
percent of your RDA. The same principle can be applied to all nutrients.
Remember you RDA gets modified during
disease and life stages like pregnancy. Now that you know the percentage, use
the 5 percent and 20 percent principle as given below:
5 percent or less of RDA is low – try to
aim ‘low’ when counting total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium.
20 percent or more is high – try to aim
‘high’ when counting vitamins, minerals and fibre.
Some NI panels show amount of nutrient
amounts as percentage Daily Values (DV) instead of percentage RDA. A DV is
gender neutral amount of a nutrient, a person on a 2000 kcal or 2500 kcal diet
should consume per day. One can use the 5 percent and 20 percent principle in
this case also.
4.
Ingredients list: As per the Indian Prevention of
Food Adulteration (PFA) Rules (1955), ingredients have to be listed in
descending order of weight i.e. the dominant ingredient should be first in the
list. For example, if it’s whole wheat bread, whole grain wheat flour should be
the first ingredient listed. The rules also state that products using
artificial sweeteners, a common, ingredient in ‘diet’ or ‘sugar free’ foods,
must contain a label stating ‘Unsuitable for children’ and phenylketonurics, if
the sweetener is aspartame).
5.
Know what these common health food terms mean:
Low calorie - < 40 cal/serving
Calorie free or zero calories - < 5
cal/serving
Fat free or sugar free - < 1/2g of
fat or sugar/serving
High fibre – 5 or more grams of
fibre/serving
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