食品標籤上11個常見詞的特殊意義

大家買東西的時候，有留意過你買的東西嗎?接下來，小編給大家準備了食品標籤上11個常見詞的特殊意義,歡迎大家參考與借鑑。

11 Common Words With Very Specific Meanings on Food Labels

One of the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administration is to assure that foods are labeled properly. It provides regulations on what, where, and how prominently information should be placed on packaging. The idea is that consumers should not be misled by what they read on the groceries they buy. However, the labels should also be written in plain, understandable language. This means that sometimes regular English words—words that have commonsense but slightly fuzzy meanings—must be defined more precisely for food labeling. Here are 11 words that mean something more specific on the supermarket shelves.

1. IMITATION

A food that looks like another food but isn’t made of the same stuff is an imitation, right? Not quite. It only has to be labeled as “imitation” if it has a lower amount of protein or some other essential nutrient than the food it’s trying to look like.

2. FREE

If it’s free of fat, or sugar, or salt, it doesn’t mean that not one trace of those things is to be found in it. The FDA evaluates certain terms with reference to a typical portion size known as an RACC (reference amounts customarily consumed per eating occasion). An RACC of eggnog, for example, is ½ cup. For croutons, it’s 7 grams, and for scrambled eggs, 100 grams. To be labeled “free” of calories, the food must have less than 5 per RACC. For fat and sugar, less than .5 grams. For sodium, less than 5 milligrams. Also, the food must somehow be processed to be “free” of those things in order to get the simple “free” label. You can’t have “fat free lettuce,” only “lettuce, a fat free food.”

3. LOW

Low is also defined with respect to set portion sizes and varies with whether it refers to calories, fat, or sodium. For fat it’s less than 3 grams. For calories, it’s less than 40, unless it’s a prepared meal, in which case it’s 120 per 100 grams. Saturated fat and cholesterol have specific “low” values as well.

4. REDUCED/LESS

Sometimes manufacturers want to make a relational claim about a food—not just that it’s “low” in some substance, but lower than it usually is (which may mean it doesn’t meet the standard for “low” at all). Relational claims are evaluated with respect to a reference food. A reference food should be the same type of food (chocolate ice cream compared to other chocolate ice cream) though the numbers against which the “reduced” claims are compared can be an average of the top three brands. The “reduced” substance must be less than 25 percent of what it is in the reference food.

5. LIGHT

Light (or lite) is also evaluated with respect to a reference food, and a rather complicated set of conditions is taken into account for different substances. For example, if a “light” product has more than half of its calories from fat, the fat must be reduced by half per reference serving amount. If less than half its calories come from fat, it can be “light” if the calories per serving are reduced by 1/3. Sometimes foods that meet “low” requirements can also be labeled as “light.” “Lightly salted” should have 50 percent less sodium than a reference food.

6. HIGH

Our food labels don’t only brag about low levels of the bad stuff, but also about high levels of the good stuff. “High” (or “rich in”) means that the food has 20 percent or more of the recommended daily value for that nutrient per reference serving.

7. GOOD SOURCE

“Good source of” is a little lower than “high.” A food with this label should have 10 to 19 percent of the recommended daily value.

8. MORE

Below “good source” is “more,” “fortified,” “enriched,” “added,” “extra,” or “plus.” A food with 10 percent of the recommended daily value can use one of these, but it only applies for vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, and potassium.

9. LEAN

“Lean” applies to seafoods or meats that have less than combined specified levels of fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol (10g, 4.5g, and 95mg, respectively).

10. HEALTHY

To qualify as “healthy,” a product must meet the “low” standard for fat and saturated fat, another standard for sodium and cholesterol, and it must have at least 10 percent of the recommended daily value for a range of nutrients.

11. NATURAL

After years soliciting suggestions and considering comments on the question of what “natural” should mean, no useful consensus could be reached, and the FDA decided to forgo establishing an official definition. Though it hasn’t issued rules for the use of “natural,” it endorses the general understanding that it implies nothing artificial or synthetic has been added that would not normally be expected to be added.

美國食品藥物管理局(FDA)的責任之一就是確保食品被正常標註。該局提供對包裝上應標示的食品成分，產地及生產過程這些重要信息的管理規定，目的是確保產品上的說明不會誤導消費者。

然而，標籤應使用簡單且易懂的語言。這就意味着有時正常的英語單詞在食品標示中應該更加簡潔明瞭，這些詞都是常見的，但是意思稍微有些模糊。下面這11個詞在超市的貨架上就有着特殊的意義。

ATION

一種食品看上去像另一種食品，但是原料卻不相同，那麼這就是一個仿造品，是嗎?這是不準確的。如果該食品比被模仿的食品的蛋白質或其他一些營養成分低，那麼它只能被貼上“仿造品”的標籤。

食物上脫脂、無糖或者無鹽的字樣，並不意味着食物中完全沒有這些成分。美國食品藥物管理局(FDA)參照RACC(單次食用參考值)這個有代表性的分配比例來評估某些條款。例如，蛋酒的RACC數值是半杯。油炸麪包丁是7克，炒雞蛋是100克。只有對應的RACC數值小於5，才能被標註爲“free”，即：脂肪和糖分少於5克，鈉含量少於5毫克。此外，食品必須經過處理成"free"的商品，以獲得單一的標籤。你買不到“無脂肪生菜”，只能是“生菜，無脂肪的食物”。

低含量也是用來定義食品中是卡路里、脂肪和鹽分的含量。脂肪要少於3克，卡路里要小於40，才能稱爲"low"，如果是一頓總量100克的飯，總卡路里不得超過120。另外，飽和脂肪和膽固醇有特別低的價值含量。

CED/LESS

有時製造商想要做一個食品的相關聲明，不僅僅是標明某些成分中的低含量，而且比通常同類食品的含量還低(這就意味着它完全沒有達到低含量的標準)。一種參照食物應該是相同類型的食品根據數量和降低含量的比值評選出的平均前三名(例如巧克力冰激凌和其他巧克力冰激凌相比)。食物中降低的成分一定要比參照物的中該成分含量還要小25%。

T

Light通常也是被用來評定參考食物的，這是一種非常複雜的組合用來說明不同的成分。例如，如果一種“Light”食物的脂肪中一半以上的卡路里來自脂肪，其單份參考規格中的脂肪就必須減半。如果不到一半的卡路里來自脂肪，那麼單份參考規格中的卡路里就要減少1/3。有些食品達到"low"的標準也能貼上"light"的標籤。

鹽分偏少的食物中，其鹽分含量必須偏低至少50%。

我們的食品標籤不僅標榜食品中成分的“低含量”，也要宣傳高含量的好東西。高含量(豐富)就意味着食物中含有日常建議一餐所需營養價值的20%或者更多。

SOURCE

“Good source of“比”high“含量低一點。帶有這一標籤的食物應該擁有日常建議所需營養價值的10%到19%。

在“大量的(good source)”標準之下的是“更多的(more),” “增強的(fortified),” “豐富的(enriched),” “有添加的(added),” “剩餘的 (extra),”和“少量的(plus).”食物中擁有10%的日常所需營養就可以使用以上的這些詞中的一個，但是他只能應用在維他命，礦物質，蛋白質，纖維和鉀這些方面。

"lean"被用於海產品和肉類上，這些食物擁有比脂肪，含飽和脂肪酸的脂肪和膽固醇組合而成的特殊等級還要低(他們的含量分別是10克，4.5克，95毫克)。

THY

達到”健康“標準，該產品必須滿足低脂和含低飽和脂肪酸的脂肪的雙重標準，還有另一個鈉和膽固醇的標準。它必須擁有至少日常建議所需所有營養價值的10%。

RAL

對“天然”的界定經過數年的徵求意見和評論後，一直也沒有達成一致的共識，美國食品藥物管理局決定放棄長久以來官方給出的定義。雖然沒有發佈對“天然”用途的規定，但是管理局贊成普遍的理解，“天然”就是沒有經過人工的或是合成的，不會是人們通常被期望的那樣添加。