Food & Nuitrition

Here’s why you should NEVER ignore food labels!

The importance of reading food labels!

  1. First read the labels and understand what you are buying or eating. For example if a 300ml cold drink has 13g of sugar per 100g as per the label, that means it has 33g (or 6.5 teaspoons) of sugar in total. If you are aware that the WHO guidelines for added sugar consumption in a day are 5 teaspoons (25gms), you will know that even one soft drink per day is not good for your (or the family’s) health. Similarly, a 100g portion of a savoury deep fried snack could have over 50g of fat or more than the recommended daily allowance for visible fat, which is 30-45g (2-3 tablespoons) per day. Most often the fat in commercially made food is hydrogenated oils or trans fats, for which there is no safe limit. Also, look out for high levels of sodium/salt. The recommended amount of salt is around one teaspoon per day (5-6g), which is equivalent to 2300mg or 2.3g of sodium.
  2. Remember that many of the salty, deep-fried snacks and sweets we buy here in India from sweet shops or bakeries are not labeled, so we need to think carefully about the (unhealthy) ingredients that go into their making, when we shop for them.
  3. Happiness is homemade. If you don’t do so already, start making some of food items you usually buy. You can make or bake at home almost everything that you can buy in a store. When we cook from scratch we can control the amount of sugar, salt and fat we are using. It’s not at all difficult to make a homemade biscuit, most often it tastes better and it’s most definitely healthier. Food companies are motivated by short-term profit at the long-term cost of our health.

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