As part of The Irish Times food series, Áine Kerr takes five foods off the supermarket shelves to see if they live up to their 'healthy' descriptions.
A proliferation of food manufacturers are making definitive nutritional claims on their supermarket products, but decoding the food labels in the emerging era of dietary awareness often bewilders even the most discerning customer.
While nutritionists insist that food labelling should be both informative and accessible, food information panels often lack some fundamental details.
When looking beyond the brightly coloured products which adorn the supermarket corridors in an effort to decode the information panels, calculating the nutritional value becomes an increasingly complex task when attempting to comprehend the salt and sodium levels.
The Department of Health has previously warned about the need to lower salt intake from the average of 10g a day to a recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 6g in order to prevent illness. Yet, nutrition labelling is not mandatory.
The greatest source of confusion, however, is the relationship between salt and sodium which consumers must calculate independent of the packaging by multiplying the sodium value by 2.5 to get the salt equivalent, according to nutritionist Paula Mee.
A small survey by The Irish Times of five products inclusive of crackers by Tesco, Dunnes, Marks & Spencer, McVities and Jacobs, found that consumers would have eaten half their recommended daily salt intake in just four Tesco crackers.
The Marks & Spencer wheaten crackers which are low in calories and saturated fats emerged as the best option for someone on a diet, while the Jacobs cream crackers were deemed most suitable for both the person with diabetes or a heart condition.
"Heart disease is one of the biggest killers in Ireland. People need to be made more aware of this and the fact the food they choose plays a role in their health as well as lifestyle. Using labels as a method of education for people may result in them making better choices," says Mee.
However, it is not yet mandatory to include the saturated fat or hydrogenated fat content on food labels and so companies are often going to omit such figures if their products are high in fats, according to Mee.
Take five pizzas, and the discrepancy in calorie intake, sugar content and information available is most notable. The average sugar intake for half a pizza per person is 4g-6g, but in the case of the Gino Ginnelli pizza, this increases to over 11g in half a pizza. Likewise, the salt intake is 4.5g, representing almost the entire recommended daily salt intake in just half a pizza.
Looking beyond the high calorie intake of the Green Isle Gigantic pizza, consumers will note that almost half of the fat content is saturated fats. "There isn't great nutritional value in the pizzas. If they are eaten instead of a dinner, they represent a poor substitute for vegetables and potatoes which are high in fibre," says Mee.
Cooked hams which contain multiple additives and preservatives are also high in salt when closely scrutinised. In the case of Shaws ham, for example, a range of additives are listed. As an alternative, tinned fish and ham, lamb or chicken off the bone would prove more nutritional, according to Mee.
In a random selection of five muesli cereals, each manufacturer was perceived to have made verifiable claims on their front packaging regarding salt content, natural ingredients or the percentage of fruit and nut content. Of note, however, was each manufacturer's definition of an average serving in each of the food information tables. While four products, with the exception of Alpen, defined the average breakfast serving as 50g, most people would in fact eat a daily serving of more than 80g, Mee says. Therefore, the amounts consumed do not equate to the food panels provided.
While the M&S luxury fruit and nut muesli emerged with a high calorie intake of 235 calories and almost twice the fat of the Tesco- branded muesli, a more detailed examination of the food labelling shows, however, that nearly half of the sugar is actually intrinsic in the dried fruit.
Irrelevant of the taste, fibre or calorie content, those who eat breakfast often stay slimmer, more mentally alert and may even live longer than those who ignore the first meal of the day.
"If you skip breakfast, by the time you get around to eating, the liver has taken over your glucose needs and the carbohydrate you eat is converted into triglycerides, the precursor to fat cells. To help prevent these unwanted fat cells from forming, the best thing you can do is eat breakfast," Mee says.
The fromage frais for children are probably one of the best examples of the competition among manufacturers to overawe the consumer with facts, statistics and advice.
While calories are obviously not a priority when assessing a fromage frais for children, it is interesting to note however that Petit Filous has the highest number of calories and twice the saturates as that of the Dunnes Stores product.
In the Nestlé product, which contains whipped cream, fruit accounts for only 2.2 per cent of the total ingredients and is thus perceived as a "dessert-type product" as opposed to a nutritional high-calcium product.
Earlier this year, the Consumers' Association of Ireland suggested the introduction of a traffic-light labelling system featuring red, green and amber marks for key nutritional aspects such as calories, fat, sugar and salt content. In the UK, supermarkets such as Sainsbury have already introduced the system, and to date there is evidence among consumers that it has improved eating habits.
But without fixed definitions of what is in fact low fat or what is acceptable in terms of salt levels, such a system will prove impossible to implement in Ireland in the foreseeable future.