Five quick tips for reading food labels

Reading food labels can be confusing and time consuming! By the time we weigh up health concerns, whether our family will eat the food we buy, and the cost of food, we can all get overwhelmed when grocery shopping!
Here's my top five tips for reading food labels to make the whole process easier.

1. There are two columns on a food label- per serve and per 100g.  Use the per 100g column initially. This means you can compare foods as all the amounts are the same. Often the serve definition will change between brands and this makes it hard to compare them.
2. Aim to buy food with less than 10 g of fat per 100g (or less than 10%)
3. Aim to buy a food with less than 10g sugar per 100g (or less than 10%). In the Weetbix label below, we see it is both below 10% for fat and sugar.
4. Choose food with the least salt possible.
5. Check out the Health stars- the more stars the healthier the food. 

There are other words listed below for fat, sugar and salt to watch out for on the Ingredient list as well, and some targets for what to aim for in your total fat, saturated fat and sugar intake.