Nutrition Labels May Be Incorrect
Written by Stuart Stevens | Wednesday, 06 December 2006 | There are 0 comments
In Australia some interesting research has revealed that you should not always accept as fact what is written on the packet of processed food. Like most first world countries it is the law in Australia that all foodstuffs have the calorie content, the fat content and other nutritional in formation written clearly on the packaging of food products but the recent research shows that very often the information is not accurate and therefore gives you a false idea of what you are eating.
The researchers said that even when they allowed for a plus or minus 20% margin of error on the sated amounts it was seen that over 80% of labels made a mistake on at least one of the food components. The survey looked at seventy food products that came in packaging for the purposes of their survey.
For example with one type of chips the researchers saw that the amount of trans fat that was stated was actually thirteen times greater than what the label said. This is particularly dangerous as trans fat is the worst type of fat for you and can cause your arteries to get blocked up, which in turn can cause heart attacks.
It was also seen that those foodstuffs that advertised that they were low in fat or salt where the most likely to have incorrect nutritional information.
The head researcher of the survey said that the rules needed to be tightened up and made clearer as there was considerable leeway for manufacturers to report the nutritional content in the products that was hampering the factual reporting of the various ingredients in food.
The real problem was that obese and overweight people would not get the right information about what they were eating and this could lead them to eat the wrong things and make them carry on putting on weight.
The survey was very thorough with lots of different foodstuffs tested and bought over a series of dates to make sure that many different food batches were tested. Almost 20% of the food tested under reported the fat content that was printed on the labeling and almost 70% had a higher calories content than specified.
Ukmedix urges caution when buying any processed food that claims to be low in fat or calories.
