How to Choose Nutritious Snacks?

Hong Kongers have a stressful work life with long working hours. As the afternoon comes, the drowsiness after lunch hits you and your productivity drops. At this time, snacks become the magic pill to fight off drowsiness and pressure, as well as supplementing your body with energy. Amongst the myriads of snacks in the market, many of them are “three-highs”, i.e. high fat, salt and sugar. Over-eating these snacks will not only cause excessive energy consumption, but it will also lead to increased risk of obesity and other chronic diseases.

Therefore, we should avoid “three-highs” foods and carefully choose healthy snacks to replenish our energy and nutrition needs. Nonetheless, how do we define snacks as “three-highs”? By reading the nutrition labels, we can identify the fat, sugar and sodium (or salt) content of the foods and choose healthier products:

What is high? (choose less)	For every100g (More than)
Total Fat	20g
Sugar	15g
Sodium	600mg

Reference: Centre for Food Safety

Hence, when we are shopping for snacks, we should choose those containing less than 20g of total fat, 15g of sugar and 600mg of sodium for every 100g of the product. It would be even more desirable if the food contained dietary fibre. Furthermore, we should keep the serving size small, which contains no more than 125 kcal per serving.

Nutrition Facts 營養成分
	Per 100 g 每 100 克	Per serving 4.7 g 每食用分量 4.7 克
Energy 總熱量	344 kcal / 千卡	16 kcal / 千卡
Protein 蛋白質	28.5 g / 克	1.3 g / 克
Total Fat 總脂肪	1.1 g / 克	0.1 g / 克
Saturated Fat 飽和脂肪	0.0 g / 克	0.0 g / 克
Trans Fat 反式脂肪	0.0 g / 克	0.0 g / 克
Total Carbohydrate 總碳水化合物	54.9 g / 克	2.6 g / 克
Dietary Fibre 膳食纖維	13.9 g / 克	0.6 g / 克
Sugar 糖	10 g / 克	0.47 g / 克
Sodium 鈉	590 mg / 毫克	27.7 mg / 毫克