Confused By Food Labeling? Join The Club.

By Sally Moe, Times Total Media Correspondent

Food labels are intended to inform, but sometimes those labels are more confusing than informative. For example, have you ever thrown out food a day after the best by date, all while wondering if it might have been good for another two to three days (or even weeks)? Or misjudged the sugar content of an item? Or consumed gluten when you thought you were safe?

Best by / Sell by / Use by

These labels, as necessary as they are to calculate freshness and shelf life, are voluntarily provided by manufacturers and stores. Understanding the differences between them is important. Best by indicates how long a product will be of peak flavor or quality.

Sell by is for foods like milk products, meat, poultry and eggs, and is for stores’ inventory management. It’s recommended to buy these products if you will use them soon. Usually, milk can last five to seven days past the sell by date before turning bad; it’s best to store it in the back of your refrigerator where it’s coldest. Use or freeze beef, veal, pork and lamb products with a sell by date within three to five days of purchase. Fresh chicken, turkey, ground meat and ground poultry should be cooked or frozen within one to two days of purchase. Regarding eggs, this advice is straight from USDA.gov: “Eggs may be refrigerated three to five weeks from the day they are placed in the refrigerator. The sell by date will usually expire during that length of time, but the eggs will be perfectly safe to use. Always purchase eggs before the sell by or expiration date on the carton. To keep them safe, take eggs straight home and store them immediately in the refrigerator set at 40°F or slightly below. Leave them in their carton and place them in the coldest part of the refrigerator, not in the door. After hard cooking, eggs can be stored a week in the refrigerator.”

Use by marks the last date recommended for the use of the product. This is often printed on meat, poultry or egg labels and should be taken seriously.

Infant formula is the sole exception to these voluntary dates. Manufacturers must add use by dates, because those dates relate to formula safety. Never use infant formula after its use by date.

Sugar: Hiding in not-so-plain sight

If you want to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet – and most of us do – start with labels. While you expect to find lots of sugar in pastries, cookies, ice cream and the like, it shows up on the ingredient lists of many savory foods, like salsa, salad dressings, soups and pasta sauce, and other foods, like peanut butter, that simply don’t need it.

Don’t limit yourself to just the word sugar in your search. Added sugar can masquerade as agave nectar, barley malt syrup, cane juice crystals, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dehydrated cane juice, dextrose, diglycerides, evaporated cane juice, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, maltodextrin, maltose, molasses, rice syrup, sorbitol, sucrose, xylitol … the list is long and varied. You may end up finding eight or more types of sugar on the ingredient list of a particular food, particularly “healthy” cereals and granola bars! With something like 100 different names for sugar, this list isn’t exhaustive – but includes the more popular offenders. To see a complete list, visit http:// foodaddictiontherapynyc.com/103-names-of-sugar/.

Gluten: Know what to look for

If you want or need to go gluten free, you’ll discover at the outset that it means more than avoiding bread, pastries, pasta and pizza. Gluten is practically ubiquitous in prepared foods, and going gluten free requires vigilant label reading. Like sugar, it can masquerade as many different ingredients, and it pays to know their names. While not exhaustive, this list should give you an idea of the scope of ingredients gluten avoiders must keep an eye out for:

• Atta flour

• Autolyzed yeast and autolyzed yeast extract (MSG)

• Barley (grass, flakes, flour, malt, pearl)

• Breading, bread stuffing

• Brewer’s yeast

• Bulgur

• Durum (a type of wheat)

• Farro/faro (type of wheat also known as spelt or dinkel)

• Graham flour

• Hydrolyzed wheat protein

• Kamut (a type of wheat)

• Malt, malt extract, malt flavoring, malt syrup, malt vinegar

• Malted milk

• Matzo, matzo meal

• Modified wheat starch

• Oat bran, oat flour, oatmeal, whole oats (unless they are from pure, uncontaminated oats)

• Panko bread crumbs

• Rye bread and flour

• Seitan (a meat-like food derived from wheat gluten used in many vegetarian dishes)

• Semolina

• Triticale

• Wheat flour, wheat bran, wheat germ, wheat starch

(For a complete alphabetized list, visit https://www.celiac.com/ articles.html/forbidden-gluten-food-list-unsafe-ingredients-r182/) Information for this article was sourced from safehome.org, spoonuniversity.com, ask.usda.gov, healthyeating.sfgate.com, celiac.com and webmd.com.

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