NUTRITION LABELS 101

Nutrition Labels 101

You are what you eat, but do you know what you’re eating? Learning to read and make sense of the information provided on nutrition labels is easy. Once you master it, you can take charge of your healthy diet.

Every food product has a Nutrition Facts panel somewhere on the packaging. The first thing listed is the Serving Size. Right below that you will see Servings per Container. This is very important information. Many packages you might think are a single serving actually contain two or more portions.

Below the serving information you will see the heading Amount per Serving. Following will be the break-down of calories, fat, and nutrients. Remember that these figures are per serving only so you may have to brush up on your multiplication tables. Pre-packaged bakery style muffins, (like blueberry, or my favorite – lemon poppy seed) are a good example. If you check you’ll see that the whole muffin is often two servings. Now, most of us are going to eat the whole thing, so to get accurate information the amounts per serving must be multiplied by two.

First up are Calories. You will see that this figure is broken down into categories: total calories per serving and calories from fat. Since about 1/3 of our daily calorie intake should be from healthy fats, a good rule of thumb is to keep the fat content in everything you eat at l/3 or less of the total calories. For instance, if the total calorie count is 90, you would divide that by 3 to come up with 30. If the calories from fat are more than 30, it’s a higher fat product. Once caveat – the fats in pre-packaged foods are rarely (let me rephrase that – almost never) healthy fats, so the lower that fat number is, the better for you.

The next item on the nutrition label is Total Fat. This number is listed in grams, but if you multiply the grams of fat by 10, it should be close to the number of calories from fat. Also in this section, fats will be broken down into Saturated (animal fat and butter are examples), Monounsaturated, Polyunsaturated and Trans-fats.

Despite a great deal of hype on Trans-fats right now, Saturated fat is still the least healthy choice. The confusion comes from evidence that trans-fats raise only LDL (bad) cholesterol, while saturated fats raise HDL (good) cholesterol as well as LDL levels. If you think about it, it begins to make sense. Yes, we would all like to see higher HDL levels in our cholesterol numbers, but surely not at the expense of higher LDL levels that come with the saturated fats.

If you want the skinny on fats, visit http://www.cspinet.org/nah/07_02/fats.pdf for comprehensive information that will explain the good fat/bad fat theory and why it’s dangerous to think that you can never have too much of a good thing. The bottom line is that fat is fat and it must be limited in healthy diets. So pay attention to those fat numbers on nutrition labels – the lower the better.

Following fats is Sodium. Again, most of us get far more sodium/salt in our diets than we need. Look for no or low sodium numbers when reading nutrition labels. Get the breakdown on sodium levels at http://www.eatright.org/Public/Files/Dashfinal.pdf

Carbohydrates are listed by total grams, and then broken down into Dietary Fiber and Sugars. The relationship between added sugars and diet quality is complex. It might help to remember that naturally occurring sugar, such as that in fruit, is better for you than the white stuff added to almost everything in a package. It might also help to remember that we can live with absolutely no added sugar in our diets. Aim for high fiber low sugar numbers.

A note here ~ Foods labeled sugar free may be higher in fats and foods labeled fat free are almost always higher in sugar. If you’re trying to lose weight, pay more attention to the total number of calories than whether or not it is fat and/or sugar free.

Next on the list is Proteins. Protein is generally found in meat, fish, eggs, cheese/dairy products. Soy and nuts are also sources of protein. Unfortunately for our waistlines and our arteries, many proteins are high in fats. Try for a combination of high protein and low fat for a healthy diet – like fish, lean meats, soy and fat-free plain yogurt.

The rest of the nutrition label will list miscellaneous nutrients and vitamins in relation to the percentage of daily recommendations. It could become rocket science to try calculating and meeting 100% of your daily recommended intake. Just put this in the nice to know category and take a good quality multi-vitamin every day.

Keep reading to the bottom of the label. This is what I call the You May Be Interested to Know section. Here you might read that the food is or isn’t a significant source of a particular nutrient, fat or vitamin. It may also detail information about reduced sugar or fat as compared to the full fat and sugar counterpart.

When it comes to your healthy diet, it pays to be a label snob.