Legal Eye: Knowing what you eat

An additional benefit of this cure is that I have a chance to read something that is even drier than a legal memorandum - the label on food products. In line with the maxim "you are what you eat," the label, despite its pithiness, is a good place to seek information. And Polish law regulates in detail what information that label must contain.

Small print

Fortunately, I like my orange vegetables, and my vision is still good enough to read the small print on labels without reaching for a magnifying glass. However, given that the amount of information that needs to be included on a food-product label is so extensive, it is little wonder that the print is often small. A food product label should contain information on, among other things, the product name, ingredients, expiry date, proper method of use (only if misuse is possible), producer and place of production, weight or number of items, proper storage, batch number, and quality classification (if applicable). 

When it comes to your average candy, the wrapper is not large enough for all of this information. So for small packaging, a producer is only required to provide the product name, expiry date and weight or number of items.

First on the list

The fun starts when you begin reading the ingredients list. As a person whose favorite foods list "sugar" as the first ingredient, I was not surprised to read that ingredients must be listed in accordance with their mass. This I understand, but I always wondered about all those chemical ingredients (marked as letters and numbers) that get thrown in at the end of the list. Once again, it's all regulated. If an ingredient makes up less than two percent of the product, it may be listed at the end in no particular order with other ingredients in trace amounts. 

For those of you with food allergies, food product labels must contain information about common allergens. So you now have yet another reason to learn Polish.

Nutritional information

For anyone who is trying to eat right, one of the more important bits of information on a label is the nutritional values. Polish law specifies what information on such delicate subjects (at least for me and my love of chocolate) as calories, carbs, fats, salt, cholesterol, vitamins and minerals must be on the label and how it must be specified. I console myself with the thought that chocolate is a source of magnesium.

Always read the label

Coming back to those chocolates, all are not created equally. In fact, there are specific definitions as to, for example, "chocolate" and "milk chocolate." For a candy to be a "chocolate" it must consist of at least 43 percent cocoa, of which 26 percent is cocoa butter. "Milk chocolate" only needs to contain at least 30 percent cocoa and at least 18 percent of a milk product, of which 4.5 percent must be milk fat.

The labeling regulations don't say what the rest of the chocolate must consist of. But that's why you need to read the label on your favorite chocolate bar.

Judith Gliniecki is the managing partner of Rymar and Partners