Note the Nutrition Facts on food labels

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Putting the information on food packaging into context is important. Food producers are less keen on advertising the bad side of what is on sale and often the labelling is misleading.

I have recently started looking at food labels to find out if the food I am eating is high in fat and sugar and salt, because in order to live longer I am trying to cut back on these three dietary components.

Firstly I noticed that I often made a mistake in calculating the amount of fat in the actual whole packet rather than just "a portion", as I tend to eat the whole bag of crisps once open.

For example I just had a camembert and chilli jam sandwich. Looking afterwards at the cheese packaging I was surprised to see that a portion was only 9% of my daily fat intake as an adult..which made me feel better, until I discovered that the portion was 30g! I had just eaten at least 90 g of the cheese in one doorstep sandwich and hence was shocked at the amount of fat I had just eaten in one meal 30% of my maximum daily allowance.

My challenge this week for you is to start looking into labels on all the food you eat and cook with - start noting the salt/ fat / sugar and sweetener content.

This is not just about fat but also the marketing i.e. the "light" choice or "virtually fat free" statements - these often hide massive amounts of sugar and sweeteners which are not required and lead to diabetes, which in turn leads to heart disease -the very thing you were trying to avoid by choosing fat free in the first place.

That quality tabloid the Daily Mail has a recent article here about this issue happy reading... I love the comment about reduced fat SPAM LITE only 17% fat, or SOREEN which claims to be 90% fat free - ie high in fat at 10%!!!

Dr Ben Sinclair
Twitter: @menshealthtips 
Sinclair Health Limited

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