Packets of food are covered with pictures, ticks, slogans, serving suggestions and recommendations, and this is all marketing. It's the manufacturer trying to sell you their product. As such they tend to emphasise the good points and downplay the bad points. It's easy to be misled, so ignore most of the words and images on the box.

 

 

 

Quite often I pick up packets of seemingly simple foodstuffs, only to find the ingredients list is centimetres long and printed in the tiniest of fonts. This sets off my alarm bells, as most good food should not be that complicated. A long ingredients list suggests to me that the product is full of additives, stabilisers, thickeners, and other things I don't want to be consuming. Pick the product with a shorter ingredients list.

 

 

You don't need to read every item, but a quick scan of the ingredients list should give you an idea of what's in the product. Does this match up to your expectations?  Through doing this I've spotted avocado dips with only the tiniest bit of avocado, and a blueberry cereal which didn't contain any actual blueberries (instead there were sultanas soaked in blueberry juice).  If the product doesn't match up to your expectations, put it back and buy a different brand.