FAT content for 100g ?

With more and more packed food, I think a lot of us are familiar with the labels describing the content for 100 g.

By comparing these labels hopefully we can have an idea of what we put into our organism (I just wish they were actually a readable size).

I know that there are various types of fat, some are better, some are worse ...But just to have an idea, could you come up with some percent regarding FAT content?

I will start with: mayonaise 79g and ketchup 0.1g

 

To be perfectly honest, I don't understand the obsession with fat content of food.

There are a few facts about fat that are too often overlooked.

1. We need fat in our diet. Some vitamins that we need are 'fat soluble', so if we eliminated fat completely from our diet (which would be quite difficult), we would eventually become ill.

2. Our bodies have evolved over millenia to be well adapted to a moderately fatty diet (about an equal 3 way split between fat, protein and carbs is ideal).

3. The main reason why fat has become such a major concern in our diets is not because our diets have become bad as such, it is more than our lifestyles have changed so much that we no longer (typically) burn the number of calories that our bodies have adapted to crave.

Consider this: In the west, its only really the last 50 years or so when ordinary working class people have been able to lay their hands on pretty much as much food as they like. In poorer countries that luxury is often still unavailable. Imagine millions of years of evolution making us work hard for every calorie we get, adapting us to go days on end without any food at all and so when we do get it, we eat as much as possible to stockpile energy reserves just to stay alive. Then with no time at all for us to adapt, within a couple of generations we go from routinely burning maybe 10,000 calories per day at long hours of manual labouring, while food is like gold, to burning maybe 2000 - 3000 per day sat in an office, or watching TV at home while the various labour saving appliances do much of our work, or getting into the car to go to the shops rather than walking. Two or three generations is no way enough for evolution to catch up with our modern easy lifestyles. That's the only reason fat content in food becomes relevant. Not so many years ago it would have been considered a good thing to have a high fat content in food because it was the cheapest way to get the calories you needed to get by. My dad, and many other I know of his generation or older, regularly reminisce about the delights of a slice of bread doused in beef dripping. Or lard with bloody bits in it to many of us

 

If you stick to a diet of mainly home-cooked meals made with mainly wholesome raw ingredients (pulses, meat, fish, veg, fruit, cereals) and you choose to add flavour with a modicum of butter, cold-pressed olive or other vegetable oil, and you don't stuff your face with calorie-dense mass-produced snack food, then I don't think you need to worry.

Oh, and as Clueless says, regular exercise.

At least, that's what I do and I haven't dropped dead yet. Or got fat.

 

I am not actually worried, since I buy as little processed food as possible, but I thought I would put this post up so I don't have to read the labels...(and I want to set up a ketchup factory - joking!!!)

 

It's mainly processed food that has an excessive fat content so you should be alright. Unless it's butter and at least you know where you are with that, what you see is what you get.

 

I know what you mean about reading the labels, I can't go shopping without my glasses these days. But it's the salt content that I watch out for, not the fat. However, spuds, caulis and apples don't have labels on.

 

Sorry to digress a little from fat content, Miraflores, but I heard someone on the radio recently with some pretty good advice: 'don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't have recognised as food.' When my son was at primary school, it was most unusual for the children to have anything much that my Grandma would have recognised in their lunchboxes, except possibly an apple ... which rarely got eaten.

I don't worry about fat content but I do try to keep tabs on the total number of calories.

The clothes industry seems to be conspiring to make people put on weight. I'm regularly finding that what would once have been labelled a size twelve is now a size ten or even an eight. The other day I ended up buying a size six. I'm not sure that, even as a skinny-minnie teenager, I could have got into a size six in old money and there's certainly no way I have got smaller with the passing years. Where will it end? Will I find myself shopping in the toddlers' section?

 

Great advice about grandma food, I just wish the food stores would share the same values...

About sizes, each company has its own interpretation of sizing (same with shoes) plus how tight or loose they think their clothes should be worn.

So one can assume that by enlarge one should fit in the same size of the same company.

For some time I was selling school uniforms and I have seen endless arguments about sizing! Some overweight children don't like to hear that they are a waist 38 like a grown up and therefore some companies have small/ medium /large labels, some other call it 13/14/15 years old etc...

I imagine that some can go as far as putting a label on the clothes which has little to do with measurements.

It is useful if you are buying clothes for somebody else but personally I prefer to rely on the measurements.

And then let's not go into bra...

 

speaking of which ...

bought a pack of mince from tesco earlier today .... wife is a fitness freak-goes to gym 5 times a week, and fussy about what she eats ... she cr*pped me out because I did not read the label properly

the pack I bought has the following label (In large writing)..

Tesco Irish Beef
LEAN STEAK MINCE
Typically less than 12% Fat

when you read the small label near the bottom of the pack, (you need a magnifying glass), it states 125g contains 14.8g fat (21%)

it actually states 21% on the little label

so, how does that work??

 

Ok I might as well check the sodium...
crisps in red bag (I am intentionally vague)


fat 33.5
sodium 0.60

 

So 10 bags a day and thats your lot - blood pressure 240 over 150 here I come

 

So does that give Pot Noodles the OK!

 

You must have picked up the wrong pack Dim as my pack of Tesco Extra Lean Steak Mince has Typically less than 5%fat:D

The label at the bottom also states as Typical Values 100% raw as sold contains Energy 125kcal,Protein 20.8g Carbs 0.0g of which sugars 0.0g Fat 4.5g of which saturates{this is the bad fat}2.0g mono-unsaturates{good fat}1.9g polyunsaturates{good fat}0.2g Fibre{not helpful if you have rear end problems :D}0.0g Sodium....

The label is also red and comes under the healthy eating range so will let you know if I am still alive x years from now:D

 

Actually, it probably does here in Medway, where it is not unusual for Grandma to be in her mid thirties.

 

I have been gathering a few labels in the kitchen wanting to post some more data, but then I left them there for so long that in the end I threw them away. So I will start again now...