Food labelling may be mandatory in the EU, but does it make any sense to most consumers? Rosita Boland shops around for opinions
Everyone's heard the worthy old statement "you are what you eat", but do we really know what we're eating these days? This week, the US's most popular biscuit, the chocolate- flavoured Oreo - which has become a national byword for cookie in the way that the brand-name Tayto is synonymous with potato crisps here - was the focus of a lawsuit filed against manufacturers Kraft Foods.
Lawyer Stephen Joseph, who filed the suit, is claiming that Oreos contain an unlabelled ingredient, trans fat. Joseph maintains that food manufacturers have managed for years to avoid naming trans fat as a specific ingredient, instead bundling it up into the generic phrase "partially hydrogenated".
The advantage for the food manufacturer is that trans fat prolongs the shelf-life of a product, but its high cholesterol content is bad news for consumers - or would be bad news, if they were aware of its presence. The US Food and Drug Administration estimates that clearer food labelling could prevent between 7,600 and 17,100 cases of coronary heart disease a year
Food labelling is mandatory in the EU, but what's listed on the label still remains at least a partial mystery to consumers.
It's a weekday morning in the St Stephen's Green branch of Dunnes Stores. Karen Eastwood has dropped in to buy lunch and is examining the label on a Müller apple yoghurt.
"I'm doing Weightwatchers, so I always look at labels," she explains. Eastwood's focus is on fat content; she looks to see how the fat is broken down into saturates and unsaturates.
"Labels can be mind-boggling," Debra Hennessy says. Her husband is allergic to various foods, including eggs and fish, so she has to scrutinise the labels carefully. She finds exotic processed foods a particular problem, especially Chinese and Mexican ones. She always returns something to the shelf if she is unsure what it contains. "I wouldn't chance it on my husband. I just don't understand the labels sometimes," she says. "I don't think they put all the ingredients on the packaging either - only the stuff that doesn't harm us."
"Labelling is very unclear," states Margaret Doyle, who tries to avoid buying processed food whenever possible. "Products say they 'contain preservatives' but not what the preservatives are. It's all down to commerce, isn't it? The longer a product lasts, the more the company makes out of it - and the more preservatives must be in it."
Eamonn Slater is a chef at the United Arts Club. "I have to read labels, so I do understand what's on them," he says, tossing vegetables into his basket. "But I think people generally are terrible on fat knowledge. Saturated and unsaturated fats are buzz words, but do people really understand what they are?"
Helen Hennessy started looking closely at food labelling two years ago, after her husband had a heart scare. "I look out for low-fat products and read most labels," she says. "Sometimes I find them very complicated, so I always put something back if I don't understand what's in it."
Colm Cahalan is doing a shop for the day and also has suspicions about the truth of food labelling. "I wouldn't trust them 100 per cent. I'd trust them about 80 per cent."
Cahalan has always looked at labels, to see if there is a high fat content or too many additives. It's the additives listings which confuse him. "You can see them listed, but I don't have a grasp of what they actually mean."
Jacqueline Cooney, who started looking at labels after the arrival of her baby two years ago, says: "They don't want you to read the labels, otherwise why make the writing so small? It hurts my eyes to look at them. For the baby, I look for stuff that has low lactose and low sugar contents."
For herself, she looks for sugar-free products and checks fat content. "I understand labelling a bit, but it's confusing."
Naming a popular breakfast cereal, she says: "It has the lowest calories, but the highest fat content - it's very confusing."
Like Cooney, Bernadette Flynn started looking at labels when her children arrived. "I don't understand all of it, and I don't think they put everything in," she says. "I know when you buy chicken nuggets, there is hardly any chicken in it; it's more additives than meat."
She watches out for E numbers and checks the sugar content on yoghurts, which she often buys for the children.