Have you ever looked at the nutritional labels of the food you eat? If not, you better start looking if you are concerned about your health and want to know how to get slim.

Don’t you find it strange that people will read through and analyse the technical specifications of computers and cars before buying them, but won’t even take a glimpse at what exactly they are putting in their bodies?

Reading food labels should be an instinctive action whenever you are buying a new food product. Not only does reading the food label tell you about the nutritional content, but it also reveals to you how “chemically or artificially enhanced” the food product is.

Many of our food today is filled with artificial flavorings and preservatives. Names like aspartame, monosodium glutamate (MSG), tartrazine are some of the more renowned artificial flavorings out there. But sometimes in place of the above names, we see E621, E102 or E951.

“Uh… so what do these numbers mean? Are those subsets of vitamin E?”

Unfortunately not. Otherwise you will find a lot of food products with vitamin E in them. So what are these E numbers and what do they really mean?

Your E number is Up

E numbers are essentially codes given to a huge and growing list of food additives and permitted to be used in the European Union (E actually stands for Europe). Needless to say, food produced in Europe would need to have such E numbers reflected on their nutritional labels. Countries like Australia and New Zealand are also starting to include such E numbers in their food labeling as well. This is not the case for food produced in US yet. Read the rest of this entry »