What do food labels mean? | Integrated Learning Therapy

If you feel confused about what you should be reading and believing on food labels, you aren’t alone! Integrated Learning Therapy practitioners focus on young people so let’s see if we can offer some guidelines to steer you in the right direction regarding your children.

First of all, it is necessary to realise that labels are there for two main reasons. They tell us the name of the food or drink that we are looking at, what ingredients it is made of, its weight and where it comes from. They also are designed to tempt us into buying the product. It is their job to look attractive – hence they are colourful, have appealing pictures (aimed at the children) and try to highlight the nutritional and health credentials of the content (aimed at parents). Unfortunately, we can’t always believe the hype on the packaging. We simply have to be prepared to spend a few moments reading the label.

Listing ingredients

Ingredients are listed in their weight-descending order at the time the product is being prepared. This means that the first item on the list will be present in the largest quantity, and so on. When a product uses a variety of ingredients, such as herbs, but all in roughly the same quantity, then they can appear in any order.

Recently a friend bought a packet of Tasty Brown Onion – a 2-in-1 stew mix. The ingredients were listed as follows: Wheat flour, maize flour, salt, flavour enhancers (monosodium glutamate, E631, E627), flavouring, caramel colourant (E150c), radurised herbs, potassium chloride, sugar, vegetable oil (palm fruit, TBHQ). The nutritional information noted that, amongst other things, it contained minimal sugar but 378 mg of sodium (salt) per serving.

What do we make of this? There aren’t any onions in it, surprisingly! Seems like it contains only flour, flavourants, colourants and little more. Not very helpful, but the quantity of salt needs further examination.

Children’s recommended salt intake

As adults, we shouldn’t be having more than 6 grams (6 g) of salt per day (roughly one slightly rounded teaspoon). Children’s salt intake depends on their age, as shown below:

Children up to 6 months 1 g 1/5 teaspoon

7-12 months 1 g 1/5 teaspoon

1-3 years 2 g 2/5 teaspoon

4-6 years 3 g 3/5 teaspoon

7-10 years 5 g 1 teaspoon

The salt content of the stew mix is 378 mg, which is about 38% of 1 gram. This might sound well below the daily recommended amount for older children but because it is a ‘hidden’ ingredient in the dish being prepared, it would add considerably to the actual salt intake of a child over a day’s meals and snacks. As a general rule of thumb, the amount of salt (sodium) in any processed product would be considered low (i.e. a little) if less than 40 mg of sodium per 100 g of the product.

Some breakfast cereals, claiming to be lower in sugar, are very high in salt. This is done to improve the flavour of the food but doesn’t add to the health value. It’s quite common that children could be eating 30-40 percentage of the recommended daily amount of salt in a 30 g helping of cereal.

The presence of so many additives in the form of flavourants and colourants is also a red flag. Flavour enhancers do what they say – they perk up the taste in some foods. There are over 4 000 flavouring agents used in food, some of which are natural flavourings make some that are totally created by chemists and are not found anywhere in nature.

E-numbers

With the exception of flavourants, other additives carry an E number. The idea of the E number is to identify which have been declared ‘harmless’ by the European Union. However, if evidence mounts up to indicate that the additive might not be innocent, it can have its E number removed.

While many of us can consume many additives, some children prove to be more vulnerable to them. Here’s a list of preservatives that are best avoided if you are buying food or drinks for your children (or, of course, for yourself), particularly if they have any health issues, including learning difficulties:

E210 Benzoic acid

E211 Sodium benzoate

E211 Potassium benzoate

E213 Calcium benzoate

E214 Ethyl 4-hydroxybenzoate

E215 Ethyl 4-hydroxybenzoate sodium salt

E216 Propyl 4-hydroxybenzoate

E217 Propyl 4-hydroxybenzoate sodium salt

E218 Methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate

E219 Methyl 4-hydroxybenzoate sodium salt

E220 Sulphur dioxide

E221 Sodium dioxide

E222 Sodium hydrogen sulphite

E223 Sodium metabisulphite

E224 Potassium metabisulphite

E226 Calcium sulphite

E227 Calcium hydrogen sulphite

E230 Biphenyl

E231 2-Hydroxybiphenyl

E232 Sodium biphenyl-2-yl oxide

E233 2-(Thiazol-4-yl) benzimidazole

E239 Hexamine

E249 Potassium nitrate

E250 Sodium nitrate

E251 Sodium nitrate

E252 Potassium nitrate

And here’s a list of colourants that have been banned in many countries:

E102 Tartrazine

E104 Quinoline Yellow

E107 Yellow 2G

E110 Sunset Yellow

E120 Cochineal

E122 Carmoisine

E123 Amaranth

E124 Ponceau 4R

E127 Erthrosine

E128 Red 2G

E129 Allura Red

E131 Patent Blue V

E132 Indigo Carmine

E133 Brilliant Blue FCF

E142 Green S

E151 Black PN

E154 Brown FK

E154 Brown HT

Its really hard these days to avoid foods and drinks containing additives but it is possible to minimize intakes.

Minimising food additives

The easiest way to do this is to reduce the amount of processed foods that your family eats by going back to ‘traditional’ eating habits. Like your grandparents did, cook meat or fish or other protein source (eggs, cheese) and serve up with plenty of vegetables and fruit. Also cut back on shop-bought cakes and biscuits. It certainly helps to buy free range chickens, grass-fed beef and naturally raised pork. These may carry less of a load of the probiotics and other growth hormones used to boost meat production.

Any change you can make to your family’s diet that reduces the reliance on over-processed food, which by its nature requires lots of additives to give it form, taste, texture, colour and preservative qualities, is a step in the right direction

Isn’t this going overboard?

Are we being ridiculous? That’s an open question but going by the number of children whose symptoms have lessened with dietary changes, I believe that being cautious about food additives is sensible. Regulations for baby foods are very strict. However, after the age of 1 year, the guidelines disappear. The reasons for the levels of salt and additives being restricted in foods for babies is because their liver and kidneys, which have to deal with detoxifying these substances, are immature and simply can’t cope. It is hard to understand why older children are considered to have organs that suddenly can manage higher intakes. Toddlers and older children are exposed to foods and drinks rich in sugar, salt and additives.

So the only way you can ensure that your children are eating healthily is to be aware of how easy it is to shop for foods that may be more harmful than helpful. You simply have to be a ‘label detective’ to avoid the traps modern consumerism lays for you.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.