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Labels should tell you about what you're eating. But some important information is missing. Click on the pictures below to find out more. You can't find out what's on the menu
If you didn't
find any, that's no surprise! Restaurants, cafes, take-aways, cafeterias,
motorway service stations, burger bars... none of them have to give
you this information. So you don't know what you're eating!
You don't know what's in your take-away When you get a take-away, how do you know what you're eating?
But you can't find this out.
No-one makes restaurants, burger bars and take-away shops tell you this
information.
You don't know where you food comes from
All of those journeys mean extra pollution is produced by lorries and planes, and to a lesser extent by trains and ships. But you can't choose a less polluting yogurt because the label doesn't tell you where all of the ingredients came from or how they got to you. Ships and trains cause much less pollution than lorries and planes (planes are the worst of the lot). Food companies
do have to declare where the product was packed or processed. They also
have to tell you where the beef came from that is used in beef products.
And a few product labels do tell you if the food was made or grown by
local farmers.
You don't know what's been sprayed on your food
Hold your mouse over the
picture of the person to find out what pesticide sprayers wear to protect
themselves from the poison. Sometimes tiny amounts of pesticide remain on the food right up until the time you eat it. But the label doesn't tell you which pesticides were used.
You can't find out what's been done to your food
As the chicken soaks up water it gets heavier, so the company can sell it for more money. The label doesn't have to tell you what has happened to your food before it gets to you. It might have been stored for a long time, soaked in water and rolled in bits of cow (beef proteins), but there's no way for you to find out.
You can't tell if the animals were treated well
Hold your mouse over the picture to see what life is like for most pigs. Cramped, dirty and noisy. Some farm animals have miserable lives - especially farm animals in countries where welfare rules are not very strict. But the label doesn't have to tell you, so it's hard to pick animal-friendly food. The only way to be sure is to look for logos like the ones below. They tell you that the animal farmers stuck to the rules.
You don't know if there's fruit or not
But some drinks show fruit that isn't in the bottle. This bottle of juice drink has a photograph of a kiwi fruit on the label. There might be a tiny bit of kiwi extract in the drink, used as a flavouring, but the ingredients list shows that there is no kiwi fruit juice. Pictures on labels are there
to convince you that the product is full of good ingredients. Don't
be fooled! The only reliable way to find out is to look at the ingredients
list.
You can't tell if your food is healthy
Not all food companies tell you nutrition information, and no-one makes them put the information on the packet (unless they make a specific claim like 'low fat'). Could it be that these companies have something to hide? Unfortunately, nutrition
information can be very hard to read. You need to be good at maths to
find out what the numbers mean. One or two food companies help by doing
the maths for you. This label is from the Co-op supermarket, which tells
you if a product is high or low in fat,
salt (sodium) and
sugar. But most
food companies don't give you this extra information.
Click here to download activity sheets on the subject of food labelling.
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Hold your mouse over different parts
of the menu to find out how much 
One curry restaurant
might put lots of chicken in their chicken curries. To save money, another
curry shop might replace the chicken with bits of potato. One burger
bar's chips might be dripping in artery-clogging animal fat. The chip-shop
down the road might cook their chips in healthier vegetable oil.
Labels don't
have to tell you where your food comes from. A single pot of strawberry
yogurt could contain milk from Britain, strawberries from Poland, sugar
from Brazil, corn and wheat flour from Holland and may have been processed
in Germany. 
Most 
To make more
money, some companies inject chicken meat with a solution of beef or
pork protein so that the meat absorbs extra water.
The Vegetarian Society guarantees that there is no meat in the
food and that products and ingredients were not tested on animals
Farms where Freedom Foods are produced are monitored by the Royal
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).
You might expect
a drink with pictures of fruit on the front to contain juice from that
fruit.
The ingredients
list and the nutrition panel are the only ways you can find out what
you're eating. 
