This post is Sponsored By Chr Hansen
I am one of those parents who reads the labels. Not because I am a strict crazy food mum that does not allow my children to eat anything but organic fruit and vegies but because I want to know what is in the food I give them. Sometimes I choose to give them the bad stuff with all of the sugar and all of the numbers and all of the colours and flavours. Having said this, I want that to be my choice based on correct information rather than me being duped into thinking something is “healthy” for my kids, when it is not really. In the past this has been because I am none the wiser as all of the labelling is letters and numbers so who really knows?
We recently conducted a survey on our School Mum facebook page about the food labelling system in Australia and how much us mums actually understand what they are reading. We had over 1800 people on our Facebook page fill out the survey which was amazing!
Below are a few things we found out from the survey that we thought you might find interesting.
89% of us said we couldn’t trust current food labelling standards in Australia finding them confusing and difficult to understand and close to 62% found the use of E numbers puzzling.
57% of us said we looked at food labels more closely than we used to, with 22% saying they closely analysed product labels before purchasing.
The thing that stands out to me most about this survey is that 89% of us don’t trust current food labelling standards. 89% is a very high number and I will put my hand up as one of them.
Food labelling is really confusing. I often see things marketed to us as healthy for our kids however my question is who decides that? Sure some of these things are healthier than other things like a Mars Bar or a can of Coke but I am not so sure I would go as far as calling some things “healthy” maybe more like “better than” lol.
I let my kids eat a variety of food that would be considered healthy, unhealthy and “better than” but I like to have all of the information to make an informed decision about what they are eating. Below is an example of what clean labels would look like compared to what we currently face at the moment.
Below are a list of apps you can search out which can help you in decoding the food labelling minefield and help you in understanding what is the good stuff and the not so good stuff being put into our kids’ food.
GoScan,
E Food Additives,
E Additives,
Food Additives,
Safe Food Mum,
Healthy Kid,
Food Additives Checker,
Food Additives Australia
Colours in particular are one of those ingredients known to set some kids off so it is a good idea to have a grasp of them in terms of numbers on labels. You can find out all about natural food colours via the two websites below
At this point sadly there is no quick fix to knowing what is in our kids’ food without conducting your own research due to confusing and code breaking type labelling we are faced with on most products.
We are hopeful that with time a cleaner food labelling system will come into Australia allowing us the ease of knowing exactly what is in the food we are giving our kids. Until then be sure to do your own research using one of the food apps listed above to give you a bit of help deciphering it all and the confidence to know exactly what it is you are feeding your kids 🙂
If you know of any apps or websites you have found useful for label decoding or if you know of any products or brands that promote clean and easy to understand ingredient labels we would love it if you could share in a comment below …
Good Luck!
