Whether you are just getting started with eating better or have been on your journey for a while, paying attention to nutrition labels and knowing how to interpret the information is very important to helping you stay on track. You must read nutrition labels carefully, because the packaging can be misleading. Today I am going to help you decode and better understand nutrition labels, so you can get the best results on your health and fitness journey. So, some of the fundamentals I am covering today are:
- Serving size.
- Calories.
- Macronutrients
- Ingredients lists
- Added sugars
I didn’t used to pay attention to the nutrition label at all. Later, depending on what diet I was following, I paid attention to just the information that pertained to what I was concerned about, like how many carbohydrates for example. For a long time I didn’t pay much attention to the serving size and would often eyeball it. I don’t recommend this because you can easily eat far many more calories than you realize and not paying attention to the nutrition labels can have an impact on your results.
At one point in my journey, when I started paying attention to the nutrition label much more closely, I learned that I wasn’t losing weight because I was way off on what I thought I was consuming in terms of calories. So, let’s get into some of the key components of the nutrition label that can affect your results and how to interpret them.
- Serving size.
This is one where I learned the hard way you really have to pay attention. Not only that, you need to verify it and measure out the serving as indicated on the label. I find with the more highly processed items or the ones that aren’t so great for you, food manufacturers get tricky with how they do it. For example, with chips or crackers it’s never a clear count or portion like a half cup or something. It’s either in ounces or often grams, which is not even the standard measurement system in the US. This is where food scale is important; so you can weigh out the food according to what the label says.
I have found that labels can be downright wrong or misleading for certain things. One example is canned foods. Most standard cans are something like 14-15 ounces. The label will tell you a serving size is one cup, and then it will say the number of servings per container is “about 2,” particularly for canned soups and chili. Yet, if you actually measure the contents you will find that it’s actually one cup and maybe a little extra, but certainly not two cups.
Bagged salad kits are another one that are notoriously bag at labeling. If you look at the nutrition facts, it will breakdown a serving. If the salad has something high fat like nuts or seeds, it will say the serving is two tablespoons, same for the dressing. If it is a kit with a lot of “extras” like cheese, nuts, dried fruit, it will say there are 4.5 servings in the container, yet, if you measure all the contents, there is usually about 1-1.5 tablespoons of the nuts and 2-4 tablespoons of dressing. So when you try to reconcile this with the way they describe a serving it doesn’t make sense. So it’s really important to pay attention and measure everything out for anything you eat, so you know how much you are consuming. - Calories.
Generally speaking, most labels will show the amount of calories per serving. So if a serving is a cup, then the amount of calories shown is for one cup. Sometimes, the label will also include the amount of calories per container, which is usually the case for bags of chips. But, sometimes there are also more than one serving in items that they present as a single serving item, like a package of udon noodles for example. When you look at the label it will say two servings, even though it is more like one serving. They seem to do this for items that have a high count for a given macronutrient. So in these cases you need to go back to the serving size and verify if there really are two of that amount in the package to be sure of the calories, as well as any of the other nutrition facts. - Macronutrients.
This part of the label tells you how much of each of the three main macronutrients there are in each serving. The three macronutrients are: fat, carbohydrates, and protein. - Ingredients list.
The main thing here is what is it made of. You would be surprised at what you find on these lists when you start paying attention. For example, why is soy in almost everything, and I mean almost everything? I found out that sometimes even something marked as olive oil or avocado oil isn’t even actually that type of oil. If you look at the ingredient list and there’s anything other than the fruit or vegetable after which the oil is named, then you might want to reconsider a different brand.
The more processed something is, the more things you will not be able to pronounce will be on that list. You might want to take this into consideration and see if you can find something with fewer and more recognizable ingredients. This is also a very important element if you are trying to avoid foods that you are sensitive to, such as what you may get back, from a food sensitivity test. You have to read labels carefully for ingredients, because there are often certain ingredients in processed foods that you wouldn’t expect to be in the particular food item.
Another thing to look at is the front of the package. They will often slap some label on the front that is misleading, like “gluten free” on a bag of rice. Gluten comes from wheat products, so this is often just something to grab your attention or justify extra on the price. Another one is they will call something whole grain or multi grain, but when you check the label there is almost no fiber in it, which means any of the benefit of “whole grain” ingredients didn’t make it into what you will actually eat after all the processing. - Added sugars.
This one is helpful to be mindful of foods that have a high sugar content. You want to look at this relative to carbohydrates and fiber. For example, if something has 30 grams of carbohydrates and 18 grams of sugar, the food is practically just sugar and likely minimal benefit.
So, those are some of the essentials for understanding nutrition labels. If you haven’t been paying attention to them, I suggest trying it out and see how this shifts your results. I would love to hear from you, so please share your thoughts in the comments.
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