We will explain how to read food labels and offer a guide to doing so, helping you make informed decisions about what you consume.
Learning to read food labels is essential to understanding the nutritional information and ingredients of the products we buy. This short guide on how to learn to read food labels that we offer you will help you decipher and better understand the information present on food labels so that you can make healthier choices that are appropriate to your dietary needs.
What are food labels and what are they for?
Food labels are actually an essential tool for consumers. What do food labels tell us? They provide detailed information about the contents of food products; they tell us what ingredients have been used, give us nutritional information, and address other relevant data such as the expiration date or characteristic properties. Food labelling is crucial (and mandatory) for consumers to be able to make informed decisions about what they are buying and consuming.
Why it is important to know how to read food labels
Knowing how to read food labels is important because, first, it allows you to know exactly what you are consuming. Second, it saves you time and money. Third, and probably most importantly, it allows you to make decisions about your health.
The information they provide is vital for maintaining a balanced diet, avoiding allergens and controlling the intake of specific nutrients such as fats, sugars and sodium. In addition, they also allow us to make other decisions, such as whether we want to consume products of a certain quality or origin, having a specific social impact.
What information should food labels contain?
There is a European regulation governing food labelling, labels must include certain basic information to ensure transparency and consumer safety. This regulation is publicly accessible and available to all citizens, so we can look at it and take the most relevant information. According to this, the required information must be:
- Precise
- Easy to see and understand
- Not deceptive
- Indelible
Mandatory information for packaged foods must mention:
Name of the food product
The product name should be clear and precise, describing the food in a way that the consumer easily understands what they are buying. This includes the common name of the product, such as “bread,” “milk,” or “orange juice,” for example.
List of ingredients
The ingredient list should include all components of the product, sorted by weight in descending order. This also includes additives, which should be clearly identified. For example, a product may contain preservatives, colorants or emulsifiers that should be listed in this section.
Allergen information
It is mandatory to highlight the allergens present in the product within the list of ingredients. Common allergens include gluten, milk, nuts, soy, fish, shellfish, and eggs. This information is crucial for people with food allergies or intolerances. This is one of the developments in recent decades that has resulted in the most positive change in labelling.
Amount of certain ingredients
When an ingredient or a category of ingredients is essential for the characterization of a food or is highlighted on the label, its quantity must be specified. For example, if a jam is promoted as “strawberry jam,” it must indicate the percentage of strawberries used. This obligation is one of the most difficult for manufacturers, who no longer find it so easy to deceive consumers with simplistic and unrealistic claims.
Indication of the date (best before/expiry date)
Labels should clearly display the best before or expiration date. This helps consumers know how long the product will maintain its quality and food safety.
Country of origin
The country of origin must be indicated if necessary to avoid confusion among consumers. This is particularly important for products bearing flags or famous places of a country on their packaging, or where omitting this information could be misleading.
Name and address of the food business operator
The label must include the name and address of the manufacturer, distributor or importer established in the EU. This provides a point of contact in case of queries or problems with the product, ensuring traceability (or trying to at least).
Net amount
The net quantity of the product should be clearly indicated on the label, allowing consumers to know exactly how much they are purchasing. This is especially important for products sold by weight or volume.
Special storage conditions and/or conditions of use
Labels must include any special storage conditions, such as “keep refrigerated” or “protect from light.” This ensures that the product remains in optimal condition until consumption.
Instructions for use
If necessary, labels must provide usage instructions to ensure that the consumer knows how to properly prepare or consume the product. This is common for products that require specific cooking or mixing.
Alcohol level of drinks
For beverages containing more than 1.2% alcohol by volume, the alcohol level must be clearly indicated on the label. This informs consumers about the alcohol content of the product.
Nutritional information
Nutritional information must include data on energy (calories), fat (saturated and trans), carbohydrates (sugars and fibre), protein and salt content. This information allows consumers to evaluate the nutritional quality of the product and compare it with other foods.
How to interpret information on food labels
So what do we do with all this information? In parts: the name of the food product should be clear and specific, describing exactly what the food is, which helps to avoid confusion and ensure that you are buying the right thing. Nothing more. On the other hand, the list of ingredients, although more complicated, should show all the components of the product in descending order by weight. That is, you can use it to identify the main ingredients and the additives. The earlier they are on the list, the more of them there will be . This is especially relevant if you have any allergies or intolerances, or if you want to avoid, I don’t know, free sugar or trans fats, for example.
In addition, common allergens should be highlighted in the ingredient list to ensure the safety of people with food sensitivities. The best before or expiration date is another crucial element, indicating how long the product will maintain its quality and safety. We remember, by the way, that the best before date is not synonymous with the expiration date, but rather speaks of a loss of properties, usually organoleptic, of the product, so it does not indicate when it “goes bad” in a food safety sense.
The label should also include the country of origin when necessary to avoid confusion, especially in products with national symbols or whose provenance is crucial to their quality or authenticity. We are talking, of course, about indigenous products or products with a designation of origin. In addition, the name and address of the manufacturer, distributor or importer must be present and legible, providing a point of contact for queries or complaints. The net quantity of the product, indicated in weight or volume, allows prices and quantities to be compared between similar products, facilitating more informed purchasing decisions. Sadly, we have to say that manufacturers often manage to place this figure within the law but in a confusing or unclear way.
Special storage conditions and/or conditions of use tell us how to keep the product in optimal condition. These may include instructions such as “keep refrigerated” or “protect from light”, ensuring that the product remains safe and in good condition until consumption. Nutritional information, together with the list of ingredients, and which includes data on calories, fats, carbohydrates, proteins, and salt, is essential to evaluate the nutritional quality of the product and compare it with other foods. As we said, correctly interpreting all these sections of the label allows you to make more informed and healthy decisions about the products you choose to consume.
Nutritional and health claims on food labels
Unfortunately, nutritional and health claims on food labels are often a marketing tool used with little ethics and much intention. First of all, it is important to know that these claims are statements that highlight certain benefits of a product, such as “low in fat”, “no added sugars” or “high in fibre”. It is also necessary to emphasise that these claims are regulated by specific regulations to ensure that they are not misleading and that consumers receive truthful information, which is not always the case.
For example, for a product to be labelled as “low fat”, it must contain a specific amount of fat set by regulation. Similarly, “no added sugars” means that no sugars have been added during processing, although the product may contain natural sugars. “High in fibre” indicates that the product contains a significant level of dietary fibre, which is beneficial for digestive health. All of this must be certifiable by the manufacturer in order to be included on a label.
In Europe, food labelling and nutritional and health claims are regulated by several specific regulations:
- Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011: Establishes general rules for labelling, including nutritional information, ingredients, allergens, and storage conditions.
- Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006: Regulates nutritional and health claims, ensuring that claims are clear, truthful and supported by scientific evidence.
- Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006: Regulates the addition of vitamins and minerals to foods and the conditions for making fortification claims.
- Regulation (EU) No 432/2012: Establishes a list of permitted health claims based on scientific evaluations by EFSA.
All of these regulations are about ensuring that claims are accurate and backed by scientific evidence. For example, terms like “low calorie” or “source of protein” are not subjective phrases, but these regulations ensure that they meet specific criteria before being used on labels.
It may seem obvious, but it is important to note that to identify whether a product is healthy, it is important not only to pay attention to nutritional claims but also to review the ingredient list and full nutritional information. A product may be “low in fat” but contain high levels of added sugar, for example.
What is a healthy product, according to the labeling
The keys to identifying a healthy product include looking for certain characteristics in the food, usually among its ingredients:
- Foods with natural ingredients, the less processed, usually the better (although there are good processed ones).
- Low in added sugars.
- Low in saturated or trans fats.
- High in essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and fiber.
Be careful, because many of these properties may be included in the claims, but, as we have already said, it is essential to check the ingredients to know to what extent it is true and which characteristics are not. If we find several of them on the label of a food, we are on the right track to finding a genuinely healthy food.