You can’t trust the nutritional information labels on food products in South Africa.

It’s a messy business. There are regulations and guidelines, but they aren’t enforced, with the result that food manufacturers can – and do – pretty much claim anything they want.

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You’ll find “low fat” labels on cheese that contains double the fat volumes low-fat is supposed to indicate. You’ll find “fat-free” labels on, for instance, jelly-based sweets, which is a bit like saying “additive-free” on the apple just plucked off the tree – it was never going to be an issue.

If you’re going to manage your intake, you need to become as good at decoding the "nutrition-information" box on food labels, as home-buyers become in decoding estate-agent-speak. If you know what to look out for, you can decide for yourself whether a product is really "low-fat", "high-fibre", or "sodium-free".

We took the label from a loaf of brown bread to illustrate the pitfalls. Here’s what the terms mean, and what you should look out for: simply mouse over the terms, click on them, and an informative box will appear just above the picture (you'll also find a print-friendly version at the bottom of this page. Print it out for your wallet, and use when you're food shopping):

Click here for the print-friendly version of this guide.
 

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