By Wendy Haaf

Do those Brand A crackers you usually buy contain more artery-clogging fat than Brand X? How does the calcium and calorie content of your favorite yogurt compare with an alternative label?

Getting to know these everyday questions will soon become much easier, thanks to Canada's new mandatory food labels. New regulations introduced by Health Canada on January 1st 2003, require that packaged foods sold on Canadian grocery store shelves now carry standardized labels listing the calorie content and levels of 13 key nutrients, in addition to the ingredient list previously mandated for such products. (But don’t be surprised if some of your old favorites haven't made the switch yet – food manufacturers have between three and five years to comply.)

“There's going to be a consistency to the look of the label, so that once you get a handle on what you’re looking for, it becomes easier and easier to compare products, explains Ramona Josephson, a registered dietitian and author (with the support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation) of HeartSmart Nutrition: Shopping on the Run (Douglas and McIntyre, 2003).

How to use Labels

“There are really three reasons to use labels,” says Josephson, who runs a nutrition coaching practice in Vancouver. “One is to look at the calorie content of foods. The second is to compare similar or different types of foods, and the third would be to choose foods that are high or low in a specific nutrient.

So how do you go about looking for – and using – that information? It’s natural to start with the front of the package – but recognize that the attention-grabbing health claims you may see listed there are what Josephson dubs ‘window shopping’. “They are very useful bits of information but you have to be careful how you interpret them,” she explains.

For complete 3-page article, see Good Times magazine April 2003.