One aspect of buying food these days is reading labels. At least for me. I find I am often checking any processed food before purchasing. Both the ingredient list, and the side nutrition panel.
Doing this for awhile, brings up 2 interesting data points you may not know.
1. The Ingredient list is from largest quantity to smallest quantity. This can be useful for measuring how much fish is in fish, say. Sometimes fish is less than 50% fish. aka not fish.
2. The second is that a decrease in’ real ingredients’ can lead to an increase in calories. An example is ice cream.
Streets (really Unilever) Blue Ribbon Vanilla Icecream is my new purchase. Blue Ribbon Vanilla Icecream has as ingredients 1 and 2: 51% Buttermilk, followed by cream. Which is what ice-cream is really.
This means a lower energy reading of 858 kJ or 205 Calories per 100mL. Or around 500kJ for 2 small scoops.
This compares with readings of 1000kJ or more for other ice creams which have less dairy product (as they substitute sugar). A single Eskimo Pie or Drumstick is equivalent to 3,4 or 5 scoops.
So read your food labels. Check the 100mL/or gram values. And, examine the first few ingredients.
If they don’t read in the ‘correct’ logical order for ‘natural’ food, then perhaps the data is telling you something!