By Cecily-Anna Bennett Are you bamboozled by what the terms ‘low
fat’, ‘salt reduced’ or ‘light’ actually mean? Does the small
print on nutrition-information panels (NIPs) send you cross-eyed
with confusion? Well, it’s time to get clued-up. “Understanding
food labels helps consumers compare products, so they can choose
the healthiest options and tailor food choices to suit their
individual needs,” says accredited practising dietitian Maria
Packard. “The two most useful tools are the NIP and the
ingredients list.” So read on to instantly overhaul your eating
habits. Per serve & per 100g This can be one of the most
confusing parts of the food-label equation. As Packard explains,
food manufacturers decide how large their products’ serving
sizes are, so this dictates the per-serve information. For
example, if a product contains four serves, and you polish off
the lot in one go, you’ve just eaten four times its per-serve
nutritional content. But the standard per-100g listing, which
most labels show, is an exact am