Decoding the ingredients list of a food.
A quick scan of the ingredients list of a food product can be very revealing. Ingredients are listed in order of quantity. So generally the food product will be mostly made up of the first few ingredients on the list. If you find a product, for example, in which the first three ingredients are flour, sugar and vegetable oil, it will probably not offer a lot nutritionally. Ninety-nine% of the time, the less processed the food product, the fewer ingredients it will contain and hence the healthier it will be for you.
Be aware that many ingredients are often disguised in their labeling. For example sugar is often labelled as; sucrose, dextrose, maltose, fructose or many other words ending in the suffix "ose". Common ingredients you want to avoid include vegetable oil, artificial and/or natural colours / flavours / preservatives, any numbers or codes, sugars, flavour enhancers, MSG and as a general rule any word that is hard to pronounce.