Dissecting Nutrition Labels and Packaging

Once you have made the decision to begin living a healthy lifestyle, you have to start educating yourself. You should start with something simple...the nutrition label. Losing weight, maintaining weight, whatever your goal is relies heavily on what you eat. A person can exercise all they want but unless they change their diet they will continue to struggle with the same issues. It's like running around the hamster wheel...you're always stuck in the same spot.

The label is actually easier to decode than many people think. On most food items the label can be found on the back of the package. The first things to observe are serving size and servings per container. All the nutritional information i.e. calories, fat, cholesterol, etc. is calculated per single serving. Take a look at the label above. According to this label this food item has 25 servings and in each serving is 6 pieces. Therefore, if you counted the contents of the entire package, there would be 150 pieces inside. Pay attention to this so that if you go over the serving size, you know to adjust the calculations for the amount per serving.

The calories listed on the label refer to how many calories are in each serving. Pretty easy, right? The difficult part with understanding calories is the attractive wording that manufacturers put on food labels to make it more appealing to dieters and health conscious folks, like us. For instance, how many times have you seen "low-calorie", "reduced-calorie", or "calorie-free" on an item and purchased the item because of these labels? Let's look at exactly what those terms mean.

• Low-calorie means that the food item has to have a calorie count of 40 calories or less.
  



• Reduced-calorie means that the food item is required to have at least 25% less calories than the regular version of that same food item.



• Calorie-free doesn't necessarily mean that there are zero calories in an item. It only means that there are less than 5 calories per serving.

If you see these terms on an item that you want to purchase remember to flip over to the nutrition label to see if it's really that great of a buy, particularly with labels that read low-calorie and reduced-calorie.

The next section is the fat. Fat gets such a bad name, however it plays a positive role for the body. It builds nerve tissue and hormones and the body uses it as fuel, as well as serving many other functions. However, fat can become something to avoid when the fat isn't burned. It then becomes deposited into your body in fat cells. That's when we get our muffin tops and moobs...not a good look.

On the same line as the calories there are the calories from fat. These are the fat calories from all the fat in that item. When you are grocery shopping choose items that have a significant difference in the amount of calories and calories from fat. The top line that reads "total fat" includes the grams of fat found in all types fat: monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated. Avoid foods that are high in saturated fat. Manufacturers also label their packages with similar terms as calories: fat-free, low-fat, and reduced-fat.

• Fat-Free: Less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving




• Low-fat: Three grams of fat or less per serving
  



• Reduced-fat: At least 25% less fat per serving than the original version.

Cholesterol is next up on the list. Cholesterol contributes to higher blood cholesterol, putting a person at risk for heart disease. Cholesterol-free food items have less than 2 milligrams of cholesterol. Items marked with low-cholesterol on the packaging have 20 milligrams or less of cholesterol.

Now comes sodium also known as salt. Eating more than the recommended amount of sodium can lead to water retention and high blood pressure. That water retention could lead to higher numbers on the scale. A daily intake of 2,300 milligrams or less is what you should shoot for.

Total carbohydrates tells you the amount of ALL types of carbs found in a single serving. A key area to be mindful of under total carbs is the amount of sugar. Ideally, the less sugar the food item has the better. Dietary fiber is also listed in this section. Choose food items with at least 2.5 grams of dietary fiber per serving.

Lastly, we have protein. You can calculate how much protein your body needs by multiplying your weight by .37. Keep that number in mind when you're reading nutritional labels. Beef, chicken, and eggs are all great sources of protein.

As far as the Percent Daily Values, just know that these percentages are based on a 2,000 calorie diet and they indicate the percentages per single serving for each element (fat, protein, sodium, etc.) present in that particular food item. The goal is to eat 100% of each element.

Now that you are a little bit wiser, go to your local grocery store and shop in peace!! Peace.