To maintain health, it is important to maintain daily food intake. Popmama.com summarizes the mistakes you may have made while reading food labels.
The recommendation is that you are only advised to consume 50 g of sugar, 5 g of salt, and 67 g of fat every day. If more than that, it means you don’t have a balanced food intake and this affects your body’s health.
Consciously or not, consumption of sugar, salt, fat (GGL) is often higher than the daily intake of protein and fiber.
Where is the source of GGL? Mostly from packaged foods. Therefore, it is very important to be observant in reading food labels.
In order not to be mistaken, let’s find out more about packaged food labels!
1. Recognizing the information in the food table
Eater.com—
On a food package, information on nutritional value is required. The contents are serving size, total energy per serving, nutrients per serving,% RDA, and footnotes.
Yusra Egayanti, S.Si, Apt, MP, Head of the Sub-Directorate for Certain Processed Food Standardization, BPOM Indonesia in the Media Workshop “Smart Read Packaging Labels, Avoid the Risk of Obesity” said information on nutritional value can be a guide for daily intake of food to be balanced.
“So, try not only to look at the name and price, but also look at the information and table of food,” said Ega.
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2. Do not see the serving size
packagingdigest.com—
In the packaging table, it is usually seen the amount of nutritional content and is usually immediately seen and considered safe because it is still included in the daily coverage. In fact, what must be seen is the number of serving sizes.
According to Ega, a serving measure is the amount of food consumed for one meal.
“At the very top, it is usually written the serving size, whether it is 250 grams or how much. Now, to find out the total nutrition, you can calculate the serving size with the total weight,” he continued.
So, if one packet has 4 servings, then the number must be multiplied by 4. Likewise with the other quantities.
The problem is that many people think that the numbers on the food table are the totals. So, you don’t realize that you have consumed more than the daily consumption limit.
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3. Skip nutritional information
Freepik—
In Indonesia, many people experience unbalanced nutrition because of their daily intake. Fast food is the main influence why someone consumes too much GGL every day.
“In a package, there are nutrients that must be included, namely total energy, total fat, saturated fat, protein, total carbohydrates, sugar and salt (sodium),” said Ega.
In Indonesia, 5 out of 100 people consume more than 50 grams of sugar a day. Meanwhile, 53 out of 100 Indonesians consume more than 2,000 mg of salt per day. Finally, 27 out of 100 people in Indonesia consume more than 67 grams of fat per day.
If you don’t pay attention to the amount of nutritional content on the food packaging, you won’t be aware of how much GGL has entered that day.
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4. Do not observe% AKG
foodnavigator.com—
Each person has a percentage of the nutritional adequacy rate. In normal people, the percent RDA is around 2,150 kcal. This figure can be different for people with certain needs.
“This RDA can be different if someone has diabetes, moves a lot, or even lacks movement,” said Prof. Dr. Dr. Mardi Santoso, DTM & H, Sp.PD-KEMD, FINASIM, FACE, chairman of PERSADIA Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi, Depok.
By paying attention to the RDA percent of a package, you can calculate how much food or drink you should consume.
Meanwhile, if you don’t see clearly, then you can spend everything yourself and have excess GGL intake.
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5. Reluctant to choose product options with the “Healthier Choices” logo
standarpangan.pom.go.id—
Did you know, in a product there is usually a green tick logo with the words “Healthier Choices”? This could be your option to limit excess GGL every day.
“The healthier option is a comparison between products that come from the same manufacturer. They compare similar products, but with healthier and more friendly results in the body,” said Ega.
For example, if a manufacturer has 2 types of packaged drinks with the same taste, but one has the “Healthier Choice” logo. That way, the product with the logo has a lower GGL content than similar products without the logo.
For those of you who are trying to live with a balanced nutrition, you can choose products with this logo.
Those are some mistakes that should be avoided so that there is no imbalance in nutritional intake. So, be observant in reading food and beverage packaging labels from now on, huh!
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