Thaddeus Jeckell - Your Fitness Advocate
BLOG ENTRY
1/12/2012
“READ THE LABEL”
Hi everyone, I hope your first full week of the New Year has been a successful one. Were you able to spring clean your diet starting with the pantry? We cleaned the shelves in preparation for our new diet as well. I always thought we ate clean and we do, but these new rules we have taken on are very challenging. I asked for a strawberry on day 2, and my wife replies with “not until the next stage”. I’m thinking to myself “all I want is a strawberry from our local Farmer’s Market” and as of right now it is a restriction. I will just have this glass of water, thanks I’m stuffed. With the future success of this diet I will share the rules and restrictions with all of you.
You find yourself staring at the shelves of cereals that seem to go on forever at the grocery store, skimming every box looking for the best option. You are trying to make a healthy food choice for your family. Every box says something enticing on the front that catches your attention. You disregard the sugar packed boxes and reach for the 100% natural, and 100% granola. This must be healthy, right?
Food labels contain a lot of information about the healthfulness of the product, if you know how to interpret them and know what to look for. Product packaging and food label’s main purpose is to sell the product. I will show you how to read food labels, so you will not be tricked again when trying to make a healthy choice at the grocery store. Food packages generally have 2 types of information on the label, the nutrition facts and the list of ingredients. This week’s diet success challenge will deal with the nutrition facts, so I want to focus on how to interpret the ingredients list and the tricky advertising on product labels. The ingredient list is the most important information on the package. Words like “all natural, low fat and sugar free” are used to entice customers to purchase their product. You will need to read and understand the ingredients to decide if these claims are in fact true. Is it strange that the ingredient list is in such small print that you sometimes need a magnifying glass to read it? Sometimes the list is hidden under the flap of the wrapper. This sometimes is a way of the manufacturer hiding the harmful ingredients from you. There are more than 3000 different chemicals that are purposefully added to our food every day. I couldn’t possibly list every one of them but having a general sense of knowing what goes in your food before it goes in your mouth is a good start.
Let’s start with some additives and preservatives that are popular and why they are used. A lot of additives are used to help or improve the nutritional value such as calcium and folic acid. Chemical preservatives help or maintain the safety and freshness, such as BHA, sodium benzoate, and ascorbic acid. Most chemical preservatives need to include a function, which you will find in parentheses. An example would be sodium benzoate (preservative to inhibit mold). Most additives are to improve or maintain taste, texture, or appearance, such as sweeteners, fat replacers, thickeners, stabilizers, and emulsifiers.
Here is a list of some of the worst food additives. This list could go on for several pages so I will list just a few of the most popularly used. The additives I will list have all shown to affect the body in a negative way, whether it may be headaches, nausea, hyperactivity in children, depression, heart disease, birth defects, and liver and kidney damage. Check food labels to make sure that what you buy does not contain these ingredients: MSG, Aspartame, Benzoate preservatives – BHA & BHT, Hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, Free glutamates, Artificial sweeteners-colors-flavorings, Sodium nitrates & nitrites, Sulfites, High fructose corn syrup, Refined sugars, Saccharin, and BVO.
If the ingredient list is long, there are probably a lot of chemical additives in the product. That’s not to say that if the ingredient list is small that it doesn’t contain additives, so read carefully. The largest quantity of the ingredients is listed first, and the smallest quantity is listed last. A general rule of thumb is to make sure the first 3 ingredients are all natural products, and avoid those that contain ingredients you don’t recognize.
Don’t be misled by labeling tricks and gimmicks. Remember the advertising gimmicks on the front of the label are to get you to purchase their product. Watch out for statements like these on packages: NATURAL FRUIT FLAVORS, ALL NATURAL INGREDIENTS, NO ARTIFICIAL PRESERVATIVES, 100% NATURAL, REAL FRUIT, NO PRESERVATIVES, NO ARTIFICIAL INGREDIENTS. No artificial preservatives do not mean there are no harmful additives in the product. The term “light” or “lite” on a package doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is low fat. It may refer to the texture or taste of the product. “Baked not fried” sounds healthier, but it may still have just as much fat. 85% percent fat free is the same as 15% fat, which is a lot. “No sugar added” still contains natural sugars. Some products have registered trademarks on their labels. A trademark is not a nutritional claim, even though that’s exactly what they want the consumer to believe. If a label says something like “All Natural” but has a registered trademark symbol, remember that it is for the brand not the nutrition of the product.
So the next time you are at the grocery store looking for that box of cereal that gives you the healthiest boost, you had better find the ingredient list and find out what is really in that box of cereal.
Diet Success Challenge: Read all nutrition labels. The challenge this week is to find and purchase foods that follow these guidelines to keep on your menu.
- Total Fat 3g or less
- No trans fats or saturated fats
- Cholesterol 0mg
- Sodium 0mg
- Total Carbs 15g or less
- Sugars less than half total Carbs
- Fiber 5g
- Protein 7g
- Calories per serving 55g or less
Thank you,
Your Fitness Advocate
Thaddeus
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