想減肥，下次買東西前先看懂食品標(biāo)簽1

　　One of the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administrationis to assure that foods are labeled properly. It providesregulations on what, where, and how prominently informationshould be placed on packaging. The idea is that consumersshould not be misled by what they read on the groceries theybuy. However, the labels should also be written in plain,understandable language. This means that sometimes regularEnglish words—words that have commonsense but slightly fuzzy meanings—must be definedmore precisely for food labeling. Here are 11 words that mean something more specific on thesupermarket shelves.

　　美國(guó)食品藥物管理局(FDA)的責(zé)任之一就是確保食品被正常標(biāo)注。該局提供對(duì)包裝上應(yīng)標(biāo)示的食品成分，產(chǎn)地及生產(chǎn)過程這些重要信息的管理規(guī)定，目的是確保產(chǎn)品上的說明不會(huì)誤導(dǎo)消費(fèi)者。然而，標(biāo)簽應(yīng)使用簡(jiǎn)單且易懂的語言。這就意味著有時(shí)正常的英語單詞在食品標(biāo)示中應(yīng)該更加簡(jiǎn)潔明了，這些詞都是常見的，但是意思稍微有些模糊。下面這11個(gè)詞在超市的貨架上就有著特殊的意義。

　　1. IMITATION

　　A food that looks like another food but isn’t made of the same stuff is an imitation, right? Notquite. It only has to be labeled as “imitation” if it has a lower amount of protein or some otheressential nutrient than the food it’s trying to look like.

　　一種食品看上去像另一種食品，但是原料卻不相同，那么這就是一個(gè)仿造品，是嗎?這是不準(zhǔn)確的。如果該食品比被模仿的食品的蛋白質(zhì)或其他一些營(yíng)養(yǎng)成分低，那么它只能被貼上“仿造品”的標(biāo)簽。

　　2. FREE

　　If it’s free of fat, or sugar, or salt, it doesn’t mean that not one trace of those things is to be foundin it. The FDA evaluates certain terms with reference to a typical portion size known as an RACC(reference amounts customarily consumed per eating occasion). An RACC of eggnog, for example,is ½ cup. For croutons, it’s 7 grams, and for scrambled eggs, 100 grams. To be labeled “free” ofcalories, the food must have less than 5 per RACC. For fat and sugar, less than .5 grams. Forsodium, less than 5 milligrams. Also, the food must somehow be processed to be “free” of thosethings in order to get the simple “free” label. You can’t have “fat free lettuce,” only “lettuce, a fatfree food.”

　　食物上脫脂、無糖或者無鹽的字樣，并不意味著食物中完全沒有這些成分。美國(guó)食品藥物管理局(FDA)參照RACC(單次食用參考值)這個(gè)有代表性的分配比例來評(píng)估某些條款。例如，蛋酒的RACC數(shù)值是半杯。油炸面包丁是7克，炒雞蛋是100克。只有對(duì)應(yīng)的RACC數(shù)值小于5，才能被標(biāo)注為“free”，即：脂肪和糖分少于5克，鈉含量少于5毫克。此外，食品必須經(jīng)過處理成"free"的商品，以獲得單一的標(biāo)簽。你買不到“無脂肪生菜”，只能是“生菜，無脂肪的食物”。

　　3. LOW

　　Low is also defined with respect to set portion sizes and varies with whether it refers to calories,fat, or sodium. For fat it’s less than 3 grams. For calories, it’s less than 40, unless it’s a preparedmeal, in which case it’s 120 per 100 grams. Saturated fat and cholesterol have specific “low”values as well.

　　低含量也是用來定義食品中是卡路里、脂肪和鹽分的含量。脂肪要少于3克，卡路里要小于40，才能稱為"low"，如果是一頓總量100克的飯，總卡路里不得超過120。另外，飽和脂肪和膽固醇有特別低的價(jià)值含量。

　　4. REDUCED/LESS

　　Sometimes manufacturers want to make a relational claim about a food—not just that it’s “low” insome substance, but lower than it usually is (which may mean it doesn’t meet the standard for“low” at all). Relational claims are evaluated with respect to a reference food. A reference foodshould be the same type of food (chocolate ice cream compared to other chocolate ice cream)though the numbers against which the “reduced” claims are compared can be an average of thetop three brands. The “reduced” substance must be less than 25 percent of what it is in thereference food.

　　有時(shí)制造商想要做一個(gè)食品的相關(guān)聲明，不僅僅是標(biāo)明某些成分中的低含量，而且比通常同類食品的含量還低(這就意味著它完全沒有達(dá)到低含量的標(biāo)準(zhǔn))。一種參照食物應(yīng)該是相同類型的食品根據(jù)數(shù)量和降低含量的比值評(píng)選出的平均前三名(例如巧克力冰激凌和其他巧克力冰激凌相比)。食物中降低的成分一定要比參照物的中該成分含量還要小25%。