New Food Labeling Coming Soon

About a year ago, I wrote about new food labels that would be coming soon. 

(See last year's post here)

Well, it's a year later, and today, the Ministry of Health finally unveiled the plan to label foods that are high in saturated fat, salt, or sugar! (They move fast, don't they? 😉 ) 

It's going to get easier to see at a glance which foods are considered high in sugar, salt, or saturated fats.

Here's how they will be determining what gets labeled:

Substance            in 100g (solid food)       in 100ml (liquids)

Salt            more than 400mg                more than 100mg
Sugar         more than 10g                    more than 5g
Saturated Fat  more than 4g                 more than 3g

The new labels will be on the front of food packaging and will look like this:

It's not clear to me when they will start to appear on packaging - let me know when you see them!

Hope this helps people - reading labels in Hebrew can be a challenge for some, so this should make the job a bit easier!

New Salt, Sugar, and Fat Content Labels

The Ministry of Health has announced plans to start labeling foods that have high sugar, salt, and/or fat content. The new labels will be RED warning labels on foods.

It seems that we are in for a big shock when these new labels hit the market - although it is still not certain that they will - in the first stage of implementation (higher thresholds) a whopping 39% of packaged food products in supermarkets will be sporting a warning label (or more than one)!

If the stricter standards being discussed are adopted, an incredible 51% of the packaged products in the supermarket will carry the warnings.

I don't know if this new plan will actually pan out. Obviously, major food manufacturers are lobbying against it. But just KNOWING about it should be a wake up call. 

Clearly, packaged food that many, many people buy regularly is being scrutinized for nutritional content - and much of it is failing. We all should keep that in mind when shopping. Personally, I advocate buying fresh, whole foods instead of packaged foods, but I know that is not always possible. Many people need to find some shortcuts in order to be able to fit it all in to the day!

So, whether or not the new labeling rules are implemented, I think it's a good thing to become more aware of the nutritional content of the food we're buying. Next time you pick up a package of food, look carefully at the nutritional content and the ingredients before you decide to buy it!

(And cutting back on packaged foods has another added benefit - you'll save money!)

Which packaged foods do you buy? Do you think seeing a red warning label on it will influence your decision to buy them in the future? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

My morning baking

I know what you're thinking! Baking bread, only 2 weeks before Pesach?


Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I baked rolls this morning, 2 weeks before Pesach. After all, we still need to eat, and I'm not up to kashering my kitchen early (and I wouldn't DREAM of doing that so far in advance)!


And just because Pesach is coming doesn't mean that suddenly we will start eating store-bought bread with questionable nutritional value. Nor will we give up bread, which is often the basis for our "busy-day" meals!

And, best of all, doesn't everyone love the way their house smells when bread is baking? What a great way to start the day!

So I baked rolls this morning - enough to send some sandwiches to work with my hubby, and for us to have with our soup and salad lunch, and enough for tomorrow night's sloppy-sams!

Looking for the recipe? I used my favorite, made the dough last night, and shaped the rolls this morning!