This was originally published on my Substack.

The other day, my friend and I went to shop at a grocery store. I saw a clamshell pack of local snakefruit (buah salak), and thought, should I? I was explaining out loud to my friend “I want to eat salak, but I don’t know how to pick them, I’ve only had good tasting salak, what if I picked unripe ones or ones that are not sweet?”

My friend, without hesitation replied “Pick this one! It’s sweet”, she pointed to the clamshell of salak one shelf up, produced from Thailand.

I asked how she knew. “Is it because they’re from Thailand? Or that they’re redder in color?” then she said “It says so on the packaging.”

Now, to be fair to my friend, salak is just fruit. It’s entirely plausible they figured out a way to selectively breed sweeter variants of salak (and as per packaging, it could be indeed, sweeter). I was reminded how the first thing to know about the product is always on the packaging.

But here’s the thing: food packaging does not want to inform you. It’s trying to sell something to you.

Words like “superfood,” “original,” and “wellness” are not strictly regulated descriptors in Malaysia. They are marketing words and technically accurate enough to not get anyone sued, and almost entirely meaningless when it comes to what’s actually in the product.

I’ve seen a juice brand trademark the similar words (but with a flourish, e.g. “Greene” instead of “green”) and the product turned out to be water, sugar, and a splash of juice. Not juice concentrate. Juice syrup. The word was on the label in cursive. Very convincing.

Canned milk is another classic. A lot of people assume a well-known brand of canned milk is, well, milk. It’s mostly sugar and palm oil, with some milk solids. Creamer doesn’t have dairy at all, but it has the word “cream” in it, and it lives in the same shelf as Milo and Horlicks, so people file it under “milk things” and move on.

This is not stupidity. It’s how packaging is designed to work. You’re not meant to read the fine print. It’s banking on you trusting it, and grab and go.

PSA: Read the ingredients list first

Not the nutrition panel. The ingredients list. Yes.

In Malaysia, ingredients are listed in descending order by weight. Whatever makes up the bulk of the product appears first. So if a “fruit drink” lists water, sugar, and “3% orange juice concentrate”, then that’s what it is—water, sugar, and technically some orange (lol).

A protein bar where the first three ingredients are corn syrup, chocolate, and maltodextrin is a candy bar. A “multigrain” bread where the first ingredient is refined wheat flour, with oats appearing sixth, is mostly white bread with some oats in it. This is not a trick!!! Once you know what to look for, it’s literally right there.

This is a game changer when you go grocery shopping, and the highest leverage option you can try right now. You should know what you’re buying. Instead of trying to memorize the differences between “fruit drink”, “cordial”, “nectar”, and “fruit concentrate”, pick up the product and turn it so you can read the ingredients list.

That’s it. That’s the lever.

Ok now go to a grocery store and knock yourself out with your new found knowledge.

You’re welcome,
Vaughn <3