How to actually read a food label

Most of us glance at the front of a pack — “natural”, “no added sugar”, “made with real fruit” — and stop there. But the front of a pack is marketing. The truth is on the back, in the ingredient list.

Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight. If sugar (in any of its 60+ names) appears in the first three, the product is mostly sugar. Watch for maltodextrin, invert syrup, and fruit-juice concentrate — all sugar in disguise.

Additives usually hide behind numbers or unfamiliar chemical names: stabilisers, emulsifiers, and preservatives like sodium benzoate (E211) or BHT. A short list of recognisable, whole ingredients is almost always the better choice.

This is exactly why we built the Tru Natur Scorecard: every product earns points for whole-food ingredients and loses them for additives, so you don’t have to decode the label yourself.