Food Labels Demystified

When I do my supermarket tours, one of my primary goals is to teach everyone how to properly read nutritional food labels. It’s not enough that I just point to different products and say what’s good and bad, because when the store is out of a particular item, or you go to another market, or are on vacation, you need to know how to make those decisions yourself. Luckily, it’s not a complicated science. Let’s take a look at the label below:

What do we look at here? Let’s work our way down.

Serving Size– It’s a half cup for this soup. Did you really plan on sharing this can of soup with 2 and a half of your closest friends? If not, then you need to take that into account when you’re looking at the rest of the nutrients. You’ll be surprised how small some serving sized actually are. Some granola type cereals are as little as ¼ cup a serving! It’s not surprising people gain weight eating “health food” when they end up eating what should be 3 or 4 servings in a sitting. I always figured the serving size for Ritz crackers would be measured by the sleeve. Who knew?

Calories– This is what everyone used to look at straight away about 15 years ago. Now everyone looks right away at the fat, or maybe carbohydrate content. Nobody seems to care about the lowly calorie anymore. That explain the ever expanding girth of our nation, the calorie is important stuff! If the item is too calorie dense to fit into your nutrition plan, you can stop reading. It’s that simple. I don’t care how low carb it is and I certainly don’t give a hoot how low fat it is. You’re not going to have much math here, if it’s 3 servings, you multiply by 3 if you plan on eating the whole container.

Fat– Oh boy, here we go. As a trainer I deal with two extremes here. The first think that as long as the food is low fat, they can eat as much as they want of it. Pasta is low fat, so they eat it by the bucket. Plus it’s a complex carbohydrate, whatever they think that means, so they’re extra healthy. Or maybe they’re going to take a walk tomorrow so they’re carbo-loading. Fat free cookies? As good as gold to these folks, as if they’re eating air. A bag of cookies a day? No problem. Fat free my friend. Gummi Bears are fat free too, eat a bag of those a day and see what you end up looking like. Probably like a puffy little Gummi Bear.

The other problem bunch are those that read a news article that olive oil is good for you. These people ignore calories on the label just like the pasta slurping misfits, but go the other direction. They could care less that olive oil is 150 calories a tablespoon with 16 grams of fat, they soak it up by the cup with crusty bread before dinner and think they’re doing themselves a favor. Peanuts have healthy fats? Bring on the kung pao chicken 4 times a week. Hey, this diet stuff is tasty! A 900 calorie dinner with 70 grams of fat is fine as long as it’s good fat. Sorry.

Fat matters. It’s not to be feared or ignored. You actually want some healthy fat in your food, sure, but there’s a big difference between a tablespoon of healthy oil and 6 of them. Just like a glass of red wine is good for you, but 5 is another story. Fat is also is much harder for your body to burn, so while protein and carb have 4 calories per gram, fat has 9. I try to typically keep the fat at 20-30 percent of total calories. Don’t be fat phobic and cut it out completely, but you should still be cautious about your fat intake because it’s so calorie dense.

Saturated Fat– These are fats you want to avoid. You can tell saturated fat because they stay solid at room temperature, like butter.

Trans Fat– The worst of the worst. I avoid this stuff like the plague. 0 is the goal.

Cholesterol– Unless your doctor has you on a low cholesterol diet, I don’t pay too much attention t this since cholesterol can be good or bad, as the ratios of HDL and LDL are more important than the overall cholesterol. Cholesterol is just too complicated to be assessed based on such limited info.

Sodium– Some people are more sensitive to salt than others, but it’s easy to get way too much sodium in our diets, especially while eating processed foods like too many of us are. If you can keep your daily sodium in the range of 2000-2500 grams a day, you should be in good shape. It’s not unusual to see people with a daily intake of 6,000+ however, so pay attention and see where yours is at. If you have high blood pressure this is a particular concern.

Carbohydrate– The evil carbohydrate. What’s important to know with this is what the carbohydrate is composed of. If you’re holding a bag of spinach, the label will show it as virtually all carbohydrate. Does that mean that spinach is bad? Not at all. It simply means that spinach should be combined with protein and fat to constitute a meal. It also means that the carbohydrate is easy to determine, it’s a vegetable so that’s a good carb. You can get really into the glycemic index and whatnot to determine what’s a good carb and not, but I think you can make some reasonable guesses based on common sense. Spinach, good carb. Gummi Bears, bad carb. What you want is carbs as close to Mother Nature intended as possible. Old fashioned oatmeal is good, instant oatmeal isn’t quite as good but not terrible, and oatmeal cookies stink. Since you can find spinach growing in a garden, it’s really good. The next two items on the label help us a little bit more too.

Dietary Fiber– You’ve insoluble fiber, which doesn’t dissolve in water, and soluble, which does. Both are great and help to slow down the rate your food is absorbed by your body (it actually changes the glycemic index of your meals), and keep you full longer. For a high carbohydrate food, I try to get 3 grams of fiber per 100 calories, minimum. So if you’re looking at a piece of bread and it’s 100 calories per slice but only 1 gram of fiber, put it back and keep looking. If you’ve found one with 100 cals per slice and 5 grams of fiber, you’ve got a winner, toss it in the cart. You can pretty much tell when a carbohydrate item is processed junk by looking at the fiber. Pick a bag of white bread and see the big “0” looking back at you under fiber to see what I mean. Shoot for 30 grams a day.

Sugar– Just like carbs, sugar can be good or bad. Some people avoid fruit because of the sugar. That’s foolish. Fruit is portion controlled by nature, has fiber, and a ton of other great nutritional benefits. You may have an apple with 11 grams of sugar and Gummi Bears with 11 grams of sugar, but are they equal? Heck no! For one, the apple has 55 calories in the whole thing. Shake 55 calories of Gummi Bears (6 Bears) into your hand and take a guess at which one would more satisfying. A 4oz bag of the Bears is about 150 calories. You could eat the whole bag and not even feel like you had anything. Eat three apples however and you’ll know there’s something in your stomach, and you’ll know for a couple hours. The calories are the same, but that’s the magic of fiber.

On the other hand, there’s no need to be so scared of sugar that you never have any. I keep meal replacement bars in my car for when I’m running short on time and don’t sweat the 14 grams every now and again. There are some items you have to really be on the lookout for sugar in, such as yogurt. You can find yogurt with 10 grams or 40 grams, you only know by looking.

It’s all relative to the total carbohydrate content. No sugar is great, but if I have a carb source with 50 grams of carbs, 11 grams of fiber, and 8 grams of sugar, I call that a good food. But if my carb has 10 grams of carbs and 8 of them are sugar, it’s not a good choice. Keep it all in perspective.

Protein– My favorite. I always advise clients to shoot for .8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight a day. So just take your weight, multiply it by .08, and the result is how many grams a day you should be having. Divide that number by how many meals you have a day (it better be at least 5) and you’ll have about much you should be having at each meal. There isn’t really “bad” protein like there is the carb and fat, you just need to look at how much fat there is and what kind it is along with your protein. There’s a difference between 30 grams of protein from chicken breast and 30 grams of protein from bacon. Try to top out at around 8 grams of fat for every 4 ounces of protein.

The Rest of the Label–Ignore the rest.

Most people walking around the grocery store who think they’re making good choices aren’t even reading the label, they’re reading the marketing message on the box. You should be aware of what the rules are about all those misleading labels too. Let’s take a look.

Free– A product contains no amount of, or only a trivial amount of, one of the following compounds: fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugars and calories. You may also see free foods labeled “without,” “no” and “zero.” These are synonyms for “free.”

Calorie-Free – fewer than 5 calories per serving

Sugar-Free – less than .5 grams per serving

Fat-Free – less than .5 grams per serving

Low fat – 3 grams or less per serving

Low saturated fat – 1 gram or less per serving

Low sodium – 140 milligrams or less per serving

Very low sodium – 35 milligrams or less per serving

Low cholesterol – 20 milligrams or less and 2 grams or less of saturated fat per serving

Low calorie – 40 calories or less per serving

Lean and Extra Lean: These terms can be used to describe the fat content of meat, poultry, seafood and game meats.

Lean – less than 10 grams of fat, 4.5 or less of saturated fat and less than 95 milligrams of cholesterol per serving and per 100 grams

Extra Lean – less than 5 grams of fat, less than 2 grams of saturated fat and less than 95 milligrams cholesterol per serving and per 100 grams

High: This term can be used if the food contains 20 percent or more of the daily value for a particular nutrient in a serving.

Good Source: These terms mean that one serving of a food contains 10-19 percent of the Daily Value for a particular nutrient.

Reduced: This term means that a nutritionally altered product contains at least 25 percent less of a nutrient or calories as compared to the regular or reference product. However, a reduced claim can’t be made in a product if its reference food already meets the requirement for a low claim.

Less: This term means that a food, whether altered or not, contains 25 percent less of a nutrient or calories as compared to the reference food.

Light: This descriptor can mean two things. A nutritionally altered product contains 1/3 fewer calories or 1/2 the fat of the reference food. If the food derives 50 percent or more of the calories from fat, the reduction must be 50 percent of the fat.

More: A serving of food contains a nutrient that is at least 10 percent more of the Daily Value than the reference food.

Percent Fat-Free: A product bearing this claim must be a low-fat or fat-free product. The claim must accurately represent the amount of fat present in 100 grams of the food. So, if the box of cookies you are picking up says 95 percent fat-free, it must contain 5 grams of fat per 100 grams.

Now you should be a lot smarter than 90% of the drones walking the aisles at your local supermarket. Turn the boxes over and start checking out what’s really in that “health” food or to see what kind of choices you’re making currently. Good luck and contact me to join me on my next supermarket tour to really learn how to make big changes!