The packaging of a food product has a lot of information that are important for the consumers to check. The requirement for a food product is that the producer must declare the ingredients as well as the nutritional information of the food product. This is a regulatory law that must be observed by all manufacturers in the industry. The responsibility of the manufacturer is to list the information on the packaging material but it is the responsibility of the consumer to check and ensure what is being sold is exactly what is required.
It is very important to always check the labels of every food you want to buy. You don’t want the saying “if you want to keep something away from Africans, put it in writing” to be true with you when it comes to food matters. Have you imagined that you may be consuming a product that has a clear warning on the label about daily intake level? Or maybe you are consuming a product that has a constituent that you are allergic to without you paying attention.
It will shock you that you need to check more than the expiry dates in order to ensure what you are eating is safe. For example, when you want to buy wine, the alcohol content must have been stated clearly but much more important to you is the declaration of sulphite in the product. It would have been declared clearly that “this product contains sulphite” and you want to be sure you don’t mind taking such product. Many times, this should be a decision making factor for you while choosing your wine.
When buying products, check what the constituent is as against what you have been made to believe! There is a product that is labeled as 100% juice and many are taking it as prefered choice because of this. However, a check on the label will show you that the claim of 100% is not true! You may be surprised to find out that you never checked far all along. There is another product that has been popular because it has sediments that looks like fruit fibre, many buy the product thinking it is a real fruit with fibre without checking what the constituent of the product is. You definitely have no case as the company has clearly stated what the product contaons and you are responsible for your own assumptions.
Another food you are possibly buying in ignorance are the acclaimed poundo yam flours. Majority of the poundo yam flours are not made completely of yam! It will shock you to know that most of the content contains edible starch which augments the strength of the yam. Funny enough, there are poundo yam flours that are made completley from yam products, they taste better and have the real yam taste as you have in pounded yam, all you need to do to identify is read the labels to know which is made of full yam and which has edible starch as constituents.
You do not need to know everything, there are certain terminologies however when you see on any packaging material that should make you check again to be sure. Words like preservative, colour, any word with edible or food grade in front of it. When you see the word preservative, the type of preservative must be stated and you may want to check online the effects of such preservative.
When you see the word edible or food grade, it means there exists a version of that ingredient that is not edible or not food grade. This means nothing really except in cases when some dubious companies or their staff do not use the food grade type of the ingredient or they mix the non food grade type as they are usually cheaper. So when next you are buying such products, ensure you buy only from a company that is trusted or certified by a Quality assurance institution.
There are usually cautions on packaging of food that contains ingredients that are controversial, that can be injurious or that have limit of consumption. You will see clearly statements like “this product contains sulphites” or the quote on excpected daily limit of the ingredient. This is usually obvious with drinks that contain alternative sweetner especially aspartame as the label will clearly warn you of the presence as well as the type of people that should not take it. Sometimes the packaging specifies the category of people (either in age, gender or medical condition).
Despite the fact that many want to put the liability of processed food on the manufacturer, the fact that the product has all the required information for you to make the best choice as a consumer removes the liability off their shoulders. It will not be out of place therefore to conclude that for everytime the consumer did not check the information on the product he is buying, he has intentionally defrauded himself and the manufacturer has no blame whatsoever.
If you observe a term on any packaged material but have no idea what it means, please feel free to ask me here or on any of the Safe Food Network platform
Comments
Post a Comment