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Southern Cross Health Features

Welcome to our online health and healthy lifestyle magazine. This information is necessarily of a general nature. You should always seek specific medical advice for treatment appropriate to you.

Get smart with nutrition information panels

The Nutrition Information Panels or NIP on most packaged foods can be particularly useful in managing the fat and salt in your diet. That’s because they are required to state the quantity of the very things we are trying to reduce for heart health.

Nutrition Information Panels also state the calorie (energy/kilojoule) content of food, which is very important if weight management is one of your goals.

The NIPs on food packaging always appear in the same format. The right-hand column states how much of these nutrients are included per 100 g or 100 ml, so you can easily compare different-sized products.

The calories present in the food item appear in the Energy row (kilojoules and calories are a measure of energy). The sodium row represents the salt content. Comparing these numbers on two alternative food options (for example, butter and margarine spread) will help you select the lower calorie, lower saturated fat and/or lower salt option.

Nutrition Information Panel comparing standard butter with

a reduced-fat, low salt margarine spread

The NIP makes it easy to understand the proportion of saturated and total fat in the food. For example, a snack bar that has 30 grams of fat per 100 grams is made up of almost one third fat. If a product claims to be ’98 per cent fat free’ you would expect to see two grams of fat per 100 grams in its Nutrition Information Panel.

Another useful guide when shopping for foods low in saturated fats is to look out for the Heart Foundation Tick logo. Products that feature the Tick are a healthier variety of that food. Some foods with the Tick are not always suitable for people with high blood cholesterol so always check the Nutrition Information Panel.

For more information link to Healthy Eating For Your Heart.