One of the responsibilities of the Food and Drug Administrationis to assure that foods are labeled properly. It providesregulations on what, where, and how prominently informationshould be placed on packaging. The idea is that consumersshould not be misled by what they read on the groceries theybuy. However, the labels should also be written in plain,understandable language. This means that sometimes regularEnglish words—words that have commonsense but slightly fuzzy meanings—must be definedmore precisely for food labeling. Here are 11 words that mean something more specific on thesupermarket shelves.

　　美国食品药物管理局(FDA)的责任之一就是确保食品被正常标注。该局提供对包装上应标示的食品成分，产地及生产过程这些重要信息的管理规定，目的是确保产品上的说明不会误导消费者。然而，标签应使用简单且易懂的语言。这就意味着有时正常的英语单词在食品标示中应该更加简洁明了，这些词都是常见的，但是意思稍微有些模糊。下面这11个词在超市的货架上就有着特殊的意义。

　　1. IMITATION

　　A food that looks like another food but isn’t made of the same stuff is an imitation, right? Notquite. It only has to be labeled as “imitation” if it has a lower amount of protein or some otheressential nutrient than the food it’s trying to look like.

　　一种食品看上去像另一种食品，但是原料却不相同，那么这就是一个仿造品，是吗?这是不准确的。如果该食品比被模仿的食品的蛋白质或其他一些营养成分低，那么它只能被贴上“仿造品”的标签。

　　2. FREE

　　If it’s free of fat, or sugar, or salt, it doesn’t mean that not one trace of those things is to be foundin it. The FDA evaluates certain terms with reference to a typical portion size known as an RACC(reference amounts customarily consumed per eating occasion). An RACC of eggnog, for example,is ½ cup. For croutons, it’s 7 grams, and for scrambled eggs, 100 grams. To be labeled “free” ofcalories, the food must have less than 5 per RACC. For fat and sugar, less than .5 grams. Forsodium, less than 5 milligrams. Also, the food must somehow be processed to be “free” of thosethings in order to get the simple “free” label. You can’t have “fat free lettuce,” only “lettuce, a fatfree food.”

　　食物上脱脂、无糖或者无盐的字样，并不意味着食物中完全没有这些成分。美国食品药物管理局(FDA)参照RACC(单次食用参考值)这个有代表性的分配比例来评估某些条款。例如，蛋酒的RACC数值是半杯。油炸面包丁是7克，炒鸡蛋是100克。只有对应的RACC数值小于5，才能被标注为“free”，即：脂肪和糖分少于5克，钠含量少于5毫克。此外，食品必须经过处理成"free"的商品，以获得单一的标签。你买不到“无脂肪生菜”，只能是“生菜，无脂肪的食物”。

　　3. LOW

　　Low is also defined with respect to set portion sizes and varies with whether it refers to calories,fat, or sodium. For fat it’s less than 3 grams. For calories, it’s less than 40, unless it’s a preparedmeal, in which case it’s 120 per 100 grams. Saturated fat and cholesterol have specific “low”values as well.

　　低含量也是用来定义食品中是卡路里、脂肪和盐分的含量。脂肪要少于3克，卡路里要小于40，才能称为"low"，如果是一顿总量100克的饭，总卡路里不得超过120。另外，饱和脂肪和胆固醇有特别低的价值含量。

　　4. REDUCED/LESS

　　Sometimes manufacturers want to make a relational claim about a food—not just that it’s “low” insome substance, but lower than it usually is (which may mean it doesn’t meet the standard for“low” at all). Relational claims are evaluated with respect to a reference food. A reference foodshould be the same type of food (chocolate ice cream compared to other chocolate ice cream)though the numbers against which the “reduced” claims are compared can be an average of thetop three brands. The “reduced” substance must be less than 25 percent of what it is in thereference food.

　　有时制造商想要做一个食品的相关声明，不仅仅是标明某些成分中的低含量，而且比通常同类食品的含量还低(这就意味着它完全没有达到低含量的标准)。一种参照食物应该是相同类型的食品根据数量和降低含量的比值评选出的平均前三名(例如巧克力冰激凌和其他巧克力冰激凌相比)。食物中降低的成分一定要比参照物的中该成分含量还要小25%。