Some people feel that consumers have a right to know more about the products they buy, especially their nutrition information and any possible side effects. Write an article to your school magazine, drawing students’ attention to such information which you think may be important, using at least one product as an example.
Nutrition Information: Important and Useful!
A few years ago, the Hong Kong government implemented an extremely useful law. The law requires that all food and beverage manufacturers must disclose the nutrition information on the package of their products unless special permission is given. Therefore, now when we shop around in a supermarket and buy some snacks, we can see a little square which shows the amount of calories, sugar, fats, sodium inside. Such information can help us to make a better decision on what we should buy.
What is always the first item of the nutrition information label? It must be about calories! For every adult, we have to consume 1500-2000 calories every day. Consuming more or less than this range may make us fatter or thinner respectively. It also indicates how much we should eat to prevent eating too much or less. Therefore, this label is a very important indicator for us to control our calories consumed. Especially for some biscuits which say that they are healthier, if we doubt its claim, we can simply compare it with other similar types of biscuits to see if the biscuits have fewer calories. If we are on a diet, we can choose the biscuits which have fewer calories. This can prevent us from buying the so called “healthier” but high-calorie food.
Sugar is another vital piece of information. Most of us love sweet food, yet eating too much sugar can be harmful to us as we will have a higher risk of having diabetes. Some drinks such as Coke, lemon tea and apple juice contain a large amount of sugar. Experts usually warn us not to consume more than 50 grams of sugar everyday. Therefore, when we buy drinks, we have to calculate how much sugar the can of drinks has and avoid drinking too much. Moreover, some drinks claim that they contain little or now sugar. If we read the nutrition label, we can know whether it contains less than 5% of sugar. By carefully reading the nutrition label we could avoid regrets of buying drinks which are filled with sugar. Sugar-related conditions such as diabetes and obesity will also stay far away from us.
If we want to be slim, we may not need any slimming product. Paying attention to the fats contained in the snacks is already good enough. Fats may be saturated or unsaturated. The unsaturated fats are healthy for us while the saturated ones will increase our weight and thus make us more prone to heart diseases and high-blood pressure. Therefore, snacks such as potato chips, which are deep-fried and contain much saturated fats are said to be junk food.
Next time when we visit the supermarket, we should read the nutrition information such as calories, sugar and fats. For those who want to stay healthier, this label is really good for us to make astute decisions on buying food, drinks and medicines so that we can be healthy.