How to Read Food Labels and Make Better Choices
Different names for sugar, fat, and eggs
Nutrition labels can be confusing, misleading, and even tricky at times.
Most consumers are more health-conscious now and so manufacturers are using misleading tricks to convince people to buy highly processed and unhealthy foods.
Also, if you are on a strict diet for serious health reasons or suffer from a severe food allergy, you’ve probably come to know that there are ingredients that are labeled with countless names that are actually the same thing.
For example, sugar can also be listed as corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, cane juice, and evaporated cane juice. These are all forms of sugar and food manufacturers use this to their advantage by purposely adding many different types of sugar to their products to hide the actual amount.
The best way to read nutrition labels is to understand how they work and below I will explain how the order works and what you should strive to look for if you want to maintain a healthy lifestyle and conquer the grocery store by making better food selections to add to your cart.
Ingredients are listed in order
Starting with those found in the largest amounts, by weight, and then moving on to those present with the smallest amounts. Here you can also find out if a food has eggs, milk, sugar, oils, or whatever else you want to avoid eating.
A good example here is that if you are looking for a healthier cereal and the first or second ingredient listed is sugar, that cereal probably will not be the best the health-conscious choice.
Serving Size
This reflects the amount that an average person eats in one helping.
Servings Per Package
The next line tells you how many servings the package contains. Multiply this number by the serving size and it should equal, or come close to, the total volume of the package.
Total Fat
This line tells you how many grams of fat are in one serving. If a product is labeled low-fat, it will have 3 grams or less per serving. Aim for 2–3 grams per serving, or 20–30 grams of fat per day.
Cholesterol
Only animal products have cholesterol. If there is any cholesterol (anything other than 0 grams) you can assume the food has some sort of animal product in it.
Fiber
Look for minimally processed, high-fiber foods. Aim for 40 or more grams of fiber per day, 3 or more grams per serving.
Sugar
“Low sugar” is 6 grams of sugar or less. Useful for breakfast cereals.
Some important things to look out for:
- Casein, caseinate, lactalbumin, whey or whey solids, milk solids, or low-fat milk solids are all derived from cow’s milk.
- Albumin comes from eggs.
- Corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrate, maltose, dextrose, sucrose, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, cane juice, and evaporated cane juice are all forms of sugar.
- Cane sugar is sometimes whitened using animal bones.
As suggested by The Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, if you are transitioning to a plant-based foods diet, especially for the common health issues we see today such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hormonal imbalance, cancer, etc. here are a few ingredients you should look to avoid:
- all animal products
- Fats including all lard, shortening, butter, and limit/avoid oils
- Carbohydrates that raise blood sugar, such as sugar and honey; cold cereals that are mostly sugar, white flour, and have less than 3 grams of fiber per serving; white and most wheat bread
Studies have shown that saturated fats and cholesterol intake worsens cancer.
Learning to read food labels will not only help you make healthier food choices but you will also become more health-conscious and aware of what you are deciding to put into your body.
Making healthier food choices can also be known as preventative medicine and choosing what we eat today can help prevent a list of diseases and common illnesses that we see happening far too often today.
