Looking beyond "Good for you"

Just the other day, I was feeling peckish in between writing paragraphs, and I found this small packet of  dried cranberries that's been sitting on the kitchen counter for a while. I think it was given by a friend. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so something like this tends to get overlooked pretty long. 

So, why did this make it here? A weight of 28.4g, and total carbohydrates of 23g of which 18g are sugars, and dietary fibre of 2g. Okay, we're not getting a breakdown of how much of that are natural sugars or not – sugar is by the way second on the ingredients list – so it's really hard to tell. 

This all looks pretty questionable to me; can anyone explain it to me?

But this is why when I buy something new, I tend to spend quite a bit of time comparing the nutritional info. If you'd like to do the same, I suggest looking at the far right column, which usually indicates the nutritional breakdown per 100g. It's less confusing that way than to look at the amount per serving, which by the way is highly unrepresentative of most people's serving sizes. If you have a thing for potato chips, have a look at the serving size on the bags – who eats 8 to 10 chips and stop there? I hardly do. 

The more I looked at the ingredients and nutritional info on the packaging, I found that, over time, the I naturally moved away from processed and packaged foods. These days, I head straight down to the fresh foods section. As consumers, we really should always, always look beyond any simple claims like "Good for you", "Natural" and, get this, "No chelosterol"– and go straight down to the tiny, and sometimes, confusing numbers on the back of the packaging.