Many people look at labels on a product to see the calories count before they buy them to eat. That is a great practice but can be very deceptive. Many cans and containers of food, like ice-cream, may write the calories count per servings. Do you know what ‘Per Serving’ means? 

A container of ice-cream with three servings written on it means that it can serve three people.

Let us look at a detailed example:

Take a box containing fried potato chips. On the label, they may write two Servings and 40 calories per servings. However, it is easy for a hungry young boy to eat all two servings. If a young person eats all two servings, that is 80 calories. This means that the portions we eat make a huge difference, even if it is less fat food!

Have you heard of Fat-Free, Reduced, or Lite foods and Low-fat foods? There are terms usually found on food labels.

Many countries have very strict rules on when a food can be called low-fat, Reduced/Lite, or fat-free.

Fat-free food:

This label is used when the food has 0.5grams of fat per serving. Again, this means if you eat 4 servings, you would have eaten 2.0 grams of fat!

Low-fat food:

This label is used for food with less than 3grams of fat per serving.

Lite / Reduced fat:

This label is usually used on foods that have 1/2 or 1/3 less fat than the original version of that food. Take a container of chocolate ice-cream for example. The original may be 600 calories. If a version is made with 400 or 300 calories, it can be called Lite Icecream.