Something I strongly believe in is the saying, “you can’t out train a bad diet.”

Now to be clear, when I say diet, I don’t mean the latest weight loss strategy that’s all over social media (I’m being nice since its Friday and not calling it a fad). By diet I mean, the food and drink we consume everyday, our normal eating habits. This is one of the areas I’m working on to change, balancing it out better and making healthier choices. This brings up an interesting point though, what is actually in my food?

Food labelling is actually a very interesting field, possibly less so if you aren’t somewhat of a geek like me. Anyway, there is a massive list of guidance and requirements published by the Food Standard Agency to govern this, one of the most noticeable changes in recent years has been the introduction of the traffic light system on food labels to give you a simple label with red / amber / green to tell you about the fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in the food you are thinking about eating.

Its not mandatory, its optional, which is a real shame as it can be such a useful tool in enabling people to make better choices

The information often relates to “per portion,” and not everyone’s notion of a portion matches the manufacturer’s

So if you are trying to make better choices, these will help, but always pay attention to the portion size and if they don’t have traffic lights, you can still work it out for yourself. Here’s the red/amber/green thresholds for food and drinks:

For foods

For drinks