Food & Drink Labels
Health professionals need to raise people's awareness of the nutritional claims on food labels that can be misleading, ambiguous or selective. Advice should also be provided to clients on how to read and interpret the sugar contents of products and be aware of the hidden forms of sugar.
The term "sugarless", "sugar free", "low sugar", and "no added sugar" may only mean that there is no added sucrose in a product. The product may already contain sugars that can be listed as, fructose, maltose, dextrose, glucose syrup, molasses, treacle, invert sugar, maltodextrins, maple syrup and honey - these can be cariogenic.
Nutrition information usually takes the form of a table which provides the amount of energy, protein, carbohydrate and fat per 100g of product and sometimes also per serving of pack. The information per serving is the most useful when comparing two foods. The sugar content of a product may be assessed by looking at the list of ingredients. The sooner sugar is mentioned on the list the more sugar there is in the product.
For a factsheet on food labels please see http://www.indi.ie/docs/481_FoodLabelFactSheet.pdf.
E.g. The following is the list of ingredients on a confectionery dessert label:
Ingredients: water, fructose, milk chocolate, inulin - vegetable fibre, skimmed milk powder, fat reduced cocoa powder, dried whey, gelatine, hydrogenated vegetable oil, glucose syrup.
Did you know that:
A carbonated drink (Cola) contains 35g of sugar per 330 ml can, 35g of sugar is equivalent to 7 teaspoons or 11 cubes of sugar.
Medicines
Pharmaceutical companies now produce sugar free medicines and doctors should be encouraged to prescribe them when appropriate.
For those children allergic to cows milk, soya milk is used. Soya milk contains sugar and can cause caries if it is allowed to be used ad lib from a feeding bottle. Soya milk should be used as a "feed" and not a drink.
