UK(?) MFPers - change of meat nutrition labels?

DapperKay

Hi MFPers - this can apply to other places but I live in the UK and have been noticing this and its SO confusing.

Basically, up until very recently when you went into many UK supermarkets, you would find the labels on the raw meat packets very straight forward. It would be per 100g raw. You'd then be able to calculate your meals very easily.

However, for some reason over the past couple of months this has been changing. It has started with Sainsbury's and now Tesco. Sain's no longer shows raw nutrition labels, it shows cooked. Basically it says 100g of cooked product.

This is quite tricky, because if you are counting, you rely on raw, because once your meal is cooked, it would include other ingredients and would be hard to measure.

For example:

100g of raw lean minced beef would become maybe 60g when cooked. However you can't guarantee that unless you cook it separately then measure. But if you're making sauteed meat with onions and other vegetables, then tough!

On the label at the moment it gives you 100g of cooked meat.

This is recent though - Sainsburys only introduced these labels in July I think. Tesco just added an extra column on the labels. So now they have both raw and cooked.

I wonder if there is some legal legislation requiring the cooked and not raw to be displayed? I hope not.

These are the UK regulations - they're confusing...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/300886/2902158_FoP_Nutrition_2014.pdf

FaithfulJewel

Uh oh, thanks for bringing this up.

I shop in Aldi (mostly) so my issue tends to be the nutritional info for raw meat is on the underside/inside of the label - I have to plan what is hopefully going to be best for me and work from there.

Have you tried checking their online information? On sainsburys.co.uk the have nutritional info for, for example, their chicken breast fillets and it's for raw as far as I can see.

It might change in the future but for now it might be enough. To be honest, I use MFP's non-asterisked entries for "plain" meat anyway, only using branded entries if I can't find something else for some reason.

I will definitely keep an eye out in future though

DapperKay

Ah yes - I HATE that so much about many meat items. I'm often to be found in meat aisles with my phone flash on awkwardly trying to ninja read behind the label as passers by wonder if I've got nuts.

It's not that I rely on that so much as apart from the major common meat cuts, I don't have a clue how many calories/fat they have roughly. And to be honest, there are many things that I wouldn't buy unless I was sure they are roughly within a certain range.

For example, one confusing thing in meat aisles in the UK is minced meat classifications. Lean/Extra lean mean different things in different supermarkets. Tesco's lean is 5%, waitrose its 12% I think, sainsburys its 10% - its a ballpark most of the times unless the labels are clear.

kjarvo

Yes, it's also annoying because people cook things differently. If I cook chicken in watery sauce, it's going to absorb much more water than if I fry it. Also cooking longer and draining more fat will make it weigh less.