Smart Food Shoppers

Mother nature doesn’t lie, but us humans have an awful tendency to do so from time to time. Specially when it comes to selling our products. Food companies hide the truth behind advertising and images, and the really sad and scary part of this is they are lying about our food, about what we eat and give to our kids. So it is very important to become literate in the language of food labels. Let’s not buy the lies.

Mother nature’s “label” is the easiest to read. What are the ingredients of a tomato? Tomato! And the ingredients of a banana? Banana! Yo see where I’m going? As a general rule, if it has one ingredient, eat it, if it has more than one ingredient, read it.

Are you ready to dive into that scary box of big words and numbers? Let’s get started. Nutrition facts labels are divided by sections, so I will take it one step at a time.

The information in the top section contains the serving size and amount of servings per container. Here’s the first catch for label illiterates, the serving size. Because we have the tendency of assuming that the information refers to the entire package, but not, it only refers to a serving, so it is important to see how many servings you are really taking. Most sports drinks, for example, have 4 servings, so if you are planning to drink the whole thing, you need to multiply everything by 4.

The second part refers to calories. Calories represent the amount of energy you will get from one serving of that product. So what happens if you consume more calories than your body burns? You gain fat. As part of our animal body instincts, fat is our way of saving energy for famine, or days of low food supply. As a guide line, think of 40 Calories as low, 100 Calories as moderate, and 400 Calories or more as high. FDA recommends that a maximum of 30% (nutritionists say 25%) of our calorie intake comes from fat, so look at the “Calories from fat” too.

On to the next section, the nutrient information. There are two kinds of nutrients listed here, those we want to limit, and those we want to get enough of. If the percentage is 5% or less, it is considered to be low. It is considered a good source of a nutrient if the percentage is between 10% and 19%. Anything higher is considered high in that nutrient.

Fat, Cholesterol, and Sodium (or salt), we want to limit. In the fat section, specially, it is important to read, and be smart. We want to keep the saturated fat as low as possible, and the trans fat at 0, no tolerance here. But it is not enough to see “0 Trans fat” advertised on the box, this only means it has less than 0.5 g. per serving. So this is a second big catch, look at the ingredient list, if you see hydrogenated oil, or partially hydrogenated oil, it does contain trans fat, and you shouldn’t eat it.

Total carbohydrates, this number, listed in grams, combines several types of carbs, dietary fibers, sugars, and other carbohydrates. Carbs are the biggest source of calories. But it is important to see what kind of carbs they are, because some of them are healthy, like those from fiber, and some are not, like those from simple sugars. So, the higher the dietary fiber value, the better, the lower the sugar, the better. You see, we’re half way there, and it hasn’t been so hard.

Let’s keep going, Proteins, most parts of our body are made up of protein, so we need enough of it to stay healthy. The amount of protein we should consume depends on many factors like, weight, age, physical activity, health condition, and environmental factors, among others. Growing children and pregnant and lactating women require more protein because they are growing, or helping their babies grow. As a general guide, it is recommended to consume 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight for adults every day.

Vitamins A and C are very important for us, which is why they're required to be listed on the label. Vitamin A is great for your eyesight and helps maintain healthy skin. Vitamin C builds and maintains connective tissues, heal wounds, and fight infections. The other vitamins listed are also good for us in balanced amounts.

Calcium and iron we also want enough of these minerals to stay healthy.

Ok, now that the basics are covered, let’s go into the big leagues of label reading, the ingredient list. Remember how I mentioned in the beginning, that if it has one ingredient you can go ahead and eat it knowing that it will be good for you? Well keep that in mind, for everything that does have a list of ingredients, the shorter the list, the better. Stay away form those extra long lists with many words you can’t even pronounce.
The first ingredient listed is the dominant one, so always be aware of it. If it is sugar, for example, then that is not the right breakfast for you kids!!! You are feeding them candy as the most important meal of the day. (Yes, I’m talking about some kids’ cereals).

Going on with the ingredient list, since this is not intended to be a master’s level course of nutrition, but a practical guide for our daily food shopping, I will wrap it up by listing a couple of ingredients we should always avoid, think of them as bad words, very bad words.

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS), this one is hard to completely avoid, because it is present in a lot of the food we eat, but we should try to keep it as low as possible. Our body has a very hard time digesting it and it can cause inflammation in vital organs and accelerated aging, not to mention weight gain.

Enriched and bleached flour, we should try and avoid these too, they provide empty calories that are not good for our body. Look for products made of 100 % wheat flour. Read the label though, because many types of bread that advertise "whole grain" or "wheat" on the package aren't necessarily made from 100% wheat four.

Hydrogenated oil and partially hydrogenated oil, we talked about these, bad, bad stuff. In fact, in some countries, these types of oils are illegal. They can cause inflammation, high cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease.

Refined sugar, these simple sugars, are man made, and hence non familiar to our bodies. We should only consume complex sugars, that are the ones that come from nature.

Artificial coloring, MSG (monosodium glutamate), phosphoric acid, and sodium nitrate area couple more ingredients that have been related to chronic diseases, look for them and avoid them.

And last, but certainly not least, artificial sweeteners, you know which one I'm talking about. I could write a whole new article about it (maybe I will). These should be avoided at any cost. Please, if you are to remember one thing from this article, let it be this, artificial sweeteners may harm you and you should not take them or feed them to your kids, ever.

Well congratulations my friend, I know it was kind of heavy getting to this last paragraph. But the information listed will get you much closer to speaking the language of food labels, and becoming a smarter food shopper.

To your health,

Tatiana Barrera
tatiana0211@gmail.com
954-274-4058
www.tatibjuiceplus.com