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Why It Pays To Look At Food Labels If You Want To Lose Weight
Monday February 4th 2008, 11:08am

Yesterday I enjoyed a lovely Sunday roast. Roast pork with apple sauce, roast potatoes and carrots followed by pavlova with fresh strawberries and kiwi fruit. Yum yum. I didn't go overboard with the portion sizes and at a guess probably consumed 600-800 calories.

I say at a guess because I'm not usually one to check how many calories are in the food I eat, but I'm learning to do so more and more - with often shocking results.

So let's look again at my Sunday roast. My serving of pork probably came in at 250-300 calories, the roast potatoes 200 calories, carrots 30 calories and the pavlova and fruit about 250 calories. Total about 750 calories. So at the top end of my initial guess.

Knowing I had eaten more than I have been doing since my search for my long lost six pack began, I decided to go for a brisk 15 minute run (about as much as I can manage without a passing motorist feeling obliged to stop and offer assistance).

And I also decided to have a "snack" for tea - in the shape of those Mini Cornish Pasties from Iceland.

Now normally, my version of a Mini Cornish Pasties "snack" would consist of me cooking and eating 10-12 of the little beauties. A plate's worth really. I don't usually have anything else with them, but do find myself reaching for a bag of crisps shortly afterwards.

But as I started to count out my usual portion of mini pasties I decided to take a quick look at the food label to see exactly how many calories I would be consuming.

And boy did I get a shock.

Each of those mini Cornish Pasties comes in at 78 calories. So my usual portion of 12 would give me a whopping 936 calories. Add my bag of crisps and you are looking at over 1,000 calories for what I used to consider a snack meal.

No wonder my belly has been growing.

Having been looking forward to them, I decided to go ahead and have some anyway - but instead of a dozen I put six into the oven instead. Barely enough to fill a side plate, but still 468 calories.

Little more than six mouthfuls later, my tea was finished and I was still hungry. My stomach was no doubt wondering when the other six would be coming down my oesophagus. I contemplated a packet of crisps, but amazingly resisted the temptation and went for an orange instead (90 calories instead of 130 so not a huge saving, but better for me).

Talking of food labels, still no word back from Cadbury's regarding the apparent mistake on the back of their Sports Mixture packets.

I did ask the Food Standards Agency for a second opinion because according to their website "The Food Standards Agency is concerned not only with the food we eat but with what it is sold in and how that is labelled". But the response I got back was that "The Food Standards Agency does not check the compliance of individual food labels" and that it was a matter for Trading Standards.

Meanwhile, I've spotted exactly the same calorie claim on the back of Maynard's Midget Gems packets too.

I seriously hope I'm the one who has got it wrong because I do miss my Sports Mixtures.

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