3 BIG reasons to read the labels on your food

I love working in the food industry but damn do I get pissed off at the dirty tricks that some companies play on consumers all in the name of selling more product. It’s criminal. So here are my insider top tips to ‘surviving’ packaged products.

1. Just because it’s in the “health food” aisle doesn’t make it good for you - Remember when the health food section of the supermarket was 2 shelves and now we have a whole aisle?? But as usual, things have gone too far and now everything seems to be a health food product which is far from the truth.

2. The writing on the front is just a distraction - words and phases used on the front of packaging have one goal; to get you to put that product in your basket. They sound positive, enticing and mouthwateringly delicious. But flip the product over and the list of ingredients usually tells a different story. If they are yelling about what’s NOT in the product you most definitely need to check what’s they’ve actually put in the product.

3. You can’t trust your old faithful brands - The goal of every brand is to make you a lifelong customer. You know those things you throw in your trolley without even comparing the price? Your parents probably bought the same brand. And it might be an amazing, clean, healthy, honest product… until it’s not. Ingredients change over time for many reasons and if they are being changed to a lesser quality you can rest assure the company won’t be doing a big song and dance about it. So try and make a habit of reading the labels on your usual brands every now and again, just to make sure

Don’t let these points scare or overwhelm you. There are a ton of amazing, super honest businesses out there *cough, us* who truely do want to create products using great ingredients. It’s important to continually educate yourself and know what you are putting in to your body. And when you know better, do better.