Label Trick #3:

Reduced fat

"Reduced fat" doesn't necessarily mean the food product is low in fat. It just means the product has a reduced fat content to other regular versions. Consequently, snacks labelled as "reduced fat" may still contain more than 50 percent fat.

Label Trick #4:

Less than 10% fat

According to healthy eating guidelines, no more than 30 percent of the calories we consume should come from fat. So when food products are prominently labelled as having less than "10 percent fat" or "15 percent fat", they naturally seem like a healthy choice. But here's the catch: These percentages actually refer to fat percentage by volume or weight, not the caloric percentage.

And that makes a whole lot of difference! A box of cookies, for example, that's advertised as having only 10 percent fat, for instance, contains 10g fat per 100g serving. Because fat contains 9 calories per gram, if 100g of the cookies contains 250 calories, that's 90 calories from fat (out of the total 250 calories), or 36 percent fat!

That's why it's imperative to always look at total fat calories per serving listed in the nutrition label at the back of packet, Solomon-Miles points out.