Did you know what is in a label?

Do you remember the first or last time you dated? Did you feel those butterflies in your tummy? Could you ever have enough of knowing that person?

Such should also be your relationship with food. What you eat reflects your health, not just today but in the future. Considering the huge cost of medical therapy today and the burden on the family of taking care of an individual, isn't it imperative to start nurturing your health through some simple steps today?

Knowing your food is easier said than done like most other things but here are a few pro tips to clear the air when making simple food choices especially for packaged foods:

1. Read the label: Most brands use marketing techniques to draw your attention so go beyond that advertisement you seen and read your food label.

2. Servings, Calories & Nutrients: The serving size reflect how much the brand assumes you would eat in one sitting. For instance, a pack of cookies could have 4 servings and the nutrition profile could be elaborated for a serving size of a cookie. In that case, you would require to multiply your calories and nutrients by 4 if you choose to eat all of them. Be smart to understand what nutrition values are given for how much of a serving as compared to how much is the actual quantity in the pack that you eat.

3. Hidden Sugars: While the product may advertise for 'No Sugar' what it actually implies is that it has no 'Table Sugar' or 'Sucrose' but it can have sugar alcohols or fructose that are different forms of sugar. Anything ending with an '-ose' or '-ol' is worth looking up to be sure.

4. Sodium: Ensure your product is not very high in sodium. Up to 200 mg is low in sodium. Any product with over 800 mg per serving contains very high amount of sodium as a person's daily requirement is 2000 mg.

5. Fats: The total quantity of fat in the product should be less than 10 to 20% of the recommended daily value or about 10 to 15 g per pack. Make sure it has negligible saturated fat and cholesterol with no trans fat.

6. Ingredients: The ingredients on a label are usually mentioned in the descending order of the quantity in which they are present in the product. Hence if the product has a lot of fillers or ingredients that you do not understand or vegetable oils in the beginning of the ingredient list then it may not be something you want to pick up.

7. Allergy warnings: If you have any known allergies or genetic disorders that require you to eliminate certain ingredients then make sure to thoroughly read the label as even if the ingredients might not be direct allergens, the product could be produced in a facility that processes known allergens and it would be declared on the label.

8. Flavours and Colours: While most of them are added in quantities that are approved by the country of sale, they should ideally feature in the tail end of the ingredient list indicating that they are in the least quantity or better still choose products without these.

While regulations across the globe are now trying to make the food labels as user friendly as possible by introducing color schemes to indicate a healthy range or critical range of a nutrient, we would still have to start reading the products we bring home to ensure they are nothing but catalyst to our betterment.