Buy healthier food

Take a look at any food label, and you'll see a list of ingredients. The ingredients list is given in order of weight, low coloriesso the main ingredients in the packaged food always come first. That means that if the first few ingredients are high-fat ingredients, such as cream, butter or oil, then the food in question is high-fat food.

Most food labels also contain a nutritional analysis panel. This will usually tell you how many calories there are in a single portion and also how many calories are contained in 100 grams. If you're trying to lose weight, then it's especially useful to know how many calories are contained in one portion of the food you're looking at. But be aware: the manufacturer's concept of a portion may be different from yours.

The nutritional analysis panel will also tell you the amount of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt per 100 grams. The Food Standards Agency has issued useful guidelines to help you decide if a food is high in fat or sugar.

Until recently, finding out the amount of fat, weight lose saturated fat, sugars and salt in packaged food meant you had to try to make sense of the information on the backs of packets. That isn't always convenient, especially if you're in a hurry. But now, most of the big supermarkets and many food manufacturers are using a new front-of-pack food labelling system that uses traffic light colours.