In the absence of strict regulations, food labelling can be inventive, mischievous and often misleading. The name of the game is to accentuate the positive and relay as little information about bad ingredients as is legally possible.
The following examples illustrate the need for consumers to study labels carefully:
* "Irish smoked salmon" versus "smoked Irish salmon" - so which fish is actually Irish? In fact, you can call a product Irish simply by processing it in Ireland, so "Irish Chicken Kiev" could be made with chicken from Thailand. It certainly won't have anything to do with the Ukrainian capital.
* "Eighty per cent fat free" - this actually means the product contains 20 per cent fat, way above the 3 per cent allowed for a "low fat" claim.
* Pass the sodium please! - Many nutrition labels list the sodium content, rather than telling
us how much salt a food contains (to convert, multiply the sodium figure by 2.5).
* "Lo salt" - is this product actually low in salt, or does it just contain less salt than the high amounts in the previous version of the product?
* "King-size" or "Duo"? - Snack-bar manufacturers voluntarily offered to get rid of their king-size products in an effort to reduce portion sizes. However, many then replaced the king-size bar with a "duo" product containing two smaller bars in the same size packet.
* "Organic, traditional, wholesome" and so on - yes, yes, but how many calories?