It's probably fair to say that when we visit the supermarket, much of our product selection is made on a does-what-it-says-on-the-tin basis – we're looking for food labels to cut down our shopping time, not add to the confusion. Shame, then, that the blurb on so many products, while not wrong exactly, can be more than a little misleading.

But fear not, help is at hand. The following guide will take you from label-confused to label-savvy before you can say 'low-fat banoffee pie'.

Smoke and mirrors
In our post-Jamie's School Dinners quest for quality ingredients, freshness sells. But if you think that if a product says 'garden fresh' on the label that means you're getting a superior product you would, sadly, be wrong. Along with 'ocean fresh' and 'kitchen fresh', these are terms dreamt up by the boys and girls in marketing in an effort to give an item a certain emotional saleability – they say nothing at all about the quality of a product or its ingredients.

And it doesn't stop there. Sleight-of-hand confusion continues to be the order of the day for products you might be buying for their implied healthiness. A drink labelled as 'strawberry flavoured', for example, means that most of its tang must come from actual strawberries. A 'strawberry flavour' drink, on the other hand, may be fruit-like in its taste, but that taste is likely to be artificial – its development owes more to a laboratory than a greenhouse. Likewise, a 'light' or 'lite' label doesn't necessarily mean that a food is low-cal. Rather cunningly, it can simply mean that a food is light in texture. Which, semantics aside, is hardly the same thing at all.

Sorting fat from fiction
Perhaps one of the most important things to bear in mind, then, when it comes to food labels isn't what they tell you, but what they don't. Let me explain...

Just because a packet of crisps has 30% reduced fat doesn't make it healthy – it still contains 70% of the fat you'll find in a regular packet of deep-fried potato slices. Likewise, don't be conned by sweets and spreads and other highly sweetened foodstuffs whose labels proudly proclaim them to be fat-free. Yes, they are without fat, but they're also full of sugar, making them just as unhealthy in their own special way. The same goes for low-GI labels on items such as ice cream or chocolate. While the amount of fat they contain might well release their sugars more slowly into the bloodstream, GI-stylee, it shouldn't take a qualified nutritionist to tell you that they're hardly poster foods for the healthy-eating brigade.

A lot of this kind of labelling is common sense. We, as consumers who want to enjoy the odd sneaky treat, will happily allow ourselves to be persuaded into believing that some foods are better for us than we really know them to be. Yes, dark chocolate is better for you than milk chocolate – it contains less fat. But a steady diet of its sugar-laden goodness does not a balanced diet make and will still contribute to weight gain over time.

Tricks of the trade
Even if you're a relentlessly clued-up label-checker you can still be caught out. How many of us know, for example, that food manufacturers have a 20% leeway when it comes to listing a product's calorific hit? That yoghurt proudly listing its calorific content at 80 per 100g could actually contain 64 or 96 calories per that amount. Food for thought indeed.

The moral to this cautionary tale is that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. The best way to know what you're eating is to buy fresh ingredients and prepare every meal from scratch – but who has the time to do that? Instead, ignore the flashy claims, read the fine print and get to grips with what it really means. Remember, for all the supposed 'helpfulness' of their labels, food manufacturers are there to sell you their products first and foremost – it's up to you to ensure that what ends up in your shopping trolley is what you actually want.