Cheat the Ingredient List

Items in ingredient lists on packaging are placed according to their proportion. This can be misleading when comparing products. Seeing something first in one product doesn't mean there's more of it than in another product.

This hit me when I was comparing dog food brands. Though one brand may list "chicken" first doesn't mean it has more chicken than another competitor. For example if brand ABC has 10 ingredients of roughly 10% each, chicken could be listed first if it had more than the others. Brand XYZ may have only 5 ingredients and have chicken not listed in the first spot, but still have more chicken than brand ABC!