The food label is a reliable, accurate, user-friendly source of valuable nutritional information. What you learn from reading and comparing food labels will help you to avoid ingredients and additives that may not be good for you. Knowledge leads to empowerment and better choices.
How do I read the ingredients lest?
The ingredients are listed in descending order by weight and include any color additives, preservatives, nutrients, fats, or sugar that have been added. So if a packet of food has sugar as the first ingredient, then you know that the sugar content within that food is high.
What about food additives?
There are over 14.000 man-made chemicals added to our food supply today. Our bodies are not designed to break down and digest so many chemicals and food additives. Be aware of the types of chemicals and food additives you are consuming. Some additives in our food have been linked to a variety of health problems including headaches, fatigue, and allergies.
Top 10 food additives to avoid
- Acesulfame-K
- Artificial colorings
- Aspartame
- BHA & BHT
- Caffeine
- Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)
- Nitrite and Nitrate
- Sulfites
- Tartrazine
If you need a dictionary to decipher the label, chances are you should not be eating that food.
What is fortified?
Fortified means that a nutrient that is not naturally present in a food has been added. Natural foods contain an abundance of nutrients that are instantly recognizable to the human body and so easily digested. The thousands of nutrients and photochemicals found in natural foods work in the harmony with each other. Fortified foods tend to contain isolated nutrients that nave been shown to be commonly deficient in our diet. The problem is that the natural synergy of the nutrients is lost when they are taken separately like this.
Foods fortified with calcium are one example. The type of calcium used is often calcium carbonate, which is poorly utilized and can lead to a buildup of calcium deposits that can actually cause health problems. Calcium utilization is affective by magnesium, vitamin D, boron, fiber, and the ratio of other minerals to the calcium. All of these are likely to be out of balance if calcium is added to a food. It’s not the way nature indicated it.
That is enriched?
Rice is a good example. Everybody tells me how much they love white rice. But the difference between brown rice and white rice is not just in color. The milling and polishing that converts brown rice into white rice destroys approximately two-thirds of the vitamins B3, 80 percent of the vitamin b1, 90 percent of the vitamin B6, plus half of the manganese, half of the phosphorus, 60 percent of the iron, and all of the dietary fiber and essential fatty acids. The resulting white rice is simply a refined starch that is largely bereft of its original health-boosting nutrients; you’ll probably find that white rice has been “enriched” whit vitamins B1, B3, and iron. Bur the form of these nutrients when added back into the processed rice is not the same as in the original unprocessed version, and at least 11 lost nutrients are not replaced at all.
Keep them low.
On the nutrition label, the nutrients that most people eat too much of are listed first. It is a good idea to read the labels and choose foods that are low in the following:
Salt
Salt is needed by the body to help cells take up nutrients and balance fluid levels, but it is needed in only tiny amounts. The recommended limit of salt is 6g per day. Salt is hidden in so many foods, even before you shake it on your food. Try to make sure you eat “no added salt” foods as much as possible and instead of adding salt when cooking, add flavor through dried and fresh herbs.
When reading nutrition labels also watch out for “sodium,” as 1g of sodium is roughly equivalent to 2.5g salt. Table salt is 40 percent sodium, and I want you to cut out using table salt completely. Too much salt can raise your blood pressure, which in turn can lead to heart disease, stroke, or kidney problems.
Sugar Junkies
Sugars are a type of carbohydrate that occurs naturally in bloods such as fruits. Added sugars are those that do not occur naturally in the food but are added during processing or preparation. Foods containing added sugars provide calories but may have few vitamins and minerals. Frequently consumed foods with added sugars include soft drinks, cakes, cookies, pies, ice cream, sweets, chocolate, many ready meals, and some canned foods. Consuming too many of these foods may cause weight gain or prevent you from eating more nutritious foods.
Because added sugars are not always called “sugar,” it can be difficult to identify them in food. Following is a list of just some of the names for added sugars. If one of these names appears first or second in the ingredients list, the food is probably high in added sugar.
- Brown sugar
- Cane juice
- Corn sweetener
- Corn syrup
- Dextrose
- Fructose
- Glucose
- High-fructose
- Invert sugar
- Lactose
- Maltose
- Raw cane sugar
- Raw sugar
- Sucrose syrup
The fat problem
Some fats are very good for you; in fact they are essential, hence their name, “essential fatty acids.” Most labels won’t say if the total fat content is good or bad fat, so I would urge you to get your good fat intake from avocados, seeds, nuts, and fish.
Bad fat food is difficult to digest and can lead to weight gain. Saturated fat, which often is included on the nutrition breakdown, is known to raise levels of cholesterol and increase the risk of heart disease, so always watch out for that if it is listed.
Saturated fats are solid at room temperature (butter, lard) and found mainly in animal produce and dairy products, in hard and soft margarines, cooking fats, cakes, biscuits, savory confectionaries, and chocolate.
Trans fats-the evil twin of saturated fats-are produced when vegetable and fish oils are hydrogenated to turn them into margarine or shortening. Like saturated fats from animal food, they block the conversion of essential fats, and research has shown that they may be even worse for you than saturated fats as they not only raise levels of bad blood cholesterol but also lower levels of good cholesterol. Low fat spreads often contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats.
Also be aware that low fat foods often contain sugar to make up for the lack of flavor from the fats. If sugar is not used by the body for energy it can be converted into fat and stored just like fat, so there’s no benefit in swapping to “low fat” if it simply means high sugar.
