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Every packet in Britain carries a label with three numbers that actually matter: sugar, saturated fat and salt. Everything else is noise. Manufacturers know most of us glance for two seconds, so today we're teaching your eyes exactly where to land — the traffic lights, the small print about servings, and the one word that changes everything: 'per'.
Front-of-pack traffic lights rank fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt as high, medium or low per portion. Green is genuinely good. But a ready meal can show three greens and one shouty red for salt — often the one column worth reading twice. The trick isn't decoding the colours, it's checking whether that portion matches what you'll actually eat.
A cereal bar might say 'per bar: 2 teaspoons of sugar' right next to 'per 100g: 5 teaspoons.' Both numbers are true — the bar is just smaller than 100g. Always check which one you're reading, and if a pack has multiple servings, ask yourself honestly whether you'll actually stop at one.
Total carbohydrate includes starches, fibre and sugar all lumped together, so it looks scarier than it needs to. The number that matters sits underneath: 'of which sugars.' A flavoured yogurt can carry around 4 teaspoons in one small pot — roughly what's in two chocolate digestives, just wearing a health halo.
Labels sometimes list sodium instead of salt, and sodium looks smaller because it's not the full figure — multiply sodium by two and a half to get actual salt. A typical tin of baked beans carries around 1.5 grams of salt, a good chunk of the 6 gram daily guideline for adults, before you've added anything else to the plate.
A multipack of crisps might state nutrition 'per 25g bag' — the small bag — but a family-size packet can quietly declare itself two, three, even four servings. Eat the whole thing while watching telly, and you've had every one of those servings, sugar and salt included, whether the label counted on that or not.
Ingredients lists run by weight, heaviest first — so if sugar sits second or third on a breakfast cereal, it's not a footnote, it's a main ingredient, whatever the box's front claims about wholegrains. Read down the list before you read the claims up top, and the picture usually gets a lot clearer, a lot faster.
Start your transformation — try SugarCoach free, then £2.99/weekGeneral lifestyle education, not medical advice — personal medical decisions belong with your GP or pharmacist.