Everytime you go into a grocery store, restaurant, or even your local Starbucks, you see food labels. "Reduced fat" is placed by the crumbly coffee cake at Starbucks. "Low fat" is written on the speciality cheese in the deli counter. What do the labels mean? Do you purchase the reduced fat Starbucks coffee cake because you think you are making a good fat choice? You should always look beyond the label and check the nutritional information to confirm the amount of saturated and trans-fat in the product.
The Food and Drug Administration is the governing body responsible for setting regulations for the labels on food products.
Here's what the labels mean:
Reduced fat products have 25% less fat than the full-fat product. So if the cake at the Starbucks counter is listed as reduced fat, it may still have more fat than you want in your diet. For example, if the full fat version of the cake has 20 grams of fat, the reduced fat version will have 15 grams of fat. Check the ingredients label to find the actual fat content.
Low fat products have 3 grams or less of fat per serving. Make sure to check how big the serving is and how many servings are in the package.
Fat free products have less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. Again, make sure to check the number of servings in the package.
Light products have 50% less fat than the full fat version.
Lean products are meat, chicken, or seafood that have less than 10 grams of fat, 4.5 grams of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol per 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces). 3.5 ounces is roughly equal to the size of a deck of playing cards or the palm of your hand.
Extra lean products are meat, chicken, or seafood that have less than 5 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, and 95 mg of cholesterol per 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces). 3.5 ounces is roughly equal to the size of a deck of playing cards or the palm of your hand.
All information on this page comes from the Food and Drug Administration.
Page updated on August 27, 2009
©Fats Organization