Nutrition 911, Part Three -
5 Quick Steps to Mastering Food Labels From Team Beachbody - Click here for resources, tools and
information to help you to reach your health, fitness and positive lifestyle
goals!
 Welcome
to part III of our oh-so basic nutrition class. So far, we've discussed
marketing slogans and how they can affect your eating habits.
Part I addressed the
terms organic, grass fed, free range, and farm raised.
Part II
analyzed the ever-popular "fat free" and trendy "low carb" slogans. If we've
made one conclusion, it's that we need to understand food labels in order to
eat properly. Since we probably won't scrutinize each item we toss into our
shopping cart, let's take the CliffsNotes approach.
Today's lesson: How to
judge a food in 15 seconds or less!
You should learn how to
read a label in depth because sometimes that's the only way to tell what you're
really eating.
When in a rush, however,
you can still greatly benefit from a cursory glance at a label. I can't tell
you how many times I've decided to "just make sure" an item was as healthy as
it appeared, only to find out it had an appalling amount of something I had no
interest in eating. Here is my quickie checklist. These five steps will barely
take enough time to slow the movement of the product from shelf to cart and
will more than make up for it by extending your life on the back end.
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1.
Trans and saturated fat. In the USA, all packaged foods come with a
Nutrition Facts label. The first place my eyes go is to the fat content. I draw
my personal line in the sand at trans fat. We don't need it, and there
is always another food option without it. Trans fat is man-made fat that comes
from dubious preparation processes. If an item has any, it goes back on the
shelf. Next, I look at saturated fat. We don't need much of it, and if
we eat meat or dairy products, then we probably have met our requirement
without it being in our other foods. Next to the number of grams, you'll see
the percentage of your daily requirement it contains, eliminating the need for
math. If that number is high, be wary. Of course you must evaluate what you're
buying. Olive oil, for example, is a fat, so it's going to have a high number.
However, you don't use much. Potato chips, on the other hand, would have a
lower number, but you might eat the entire bag, so you should consider that.
But that's obvious stuff, right?
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2.
Sugar. The grams from sugar are listed right below "Carbohydrates" near the
top of the label. Get instantly suspicious if this number is high. Sports foods
are supposed to have sugar because you want to quickly replace blood glycogen
lost during exercise. All other foods don't need it. If you're buying a dessert
item, you'll expect a high ratio of sugar, but for anything else you're
probably getting a cheap product that's poorly produced. Remember that many
"low fat" foods have a lot of sugar because it's not technically fat. It just
makes you fat.
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3.
Sodium. Prepared foods are usually laden with sodium and you'll find the
amount in plain sight high on the label. Often times, you can find an "organic,
nonfat, low carb" purely healthy sounding food item that has over 1,000 mg of
sodium, which is around half of your daily requirement. What you're generally
looking for from these 3 "s" ingredients are a low number, and it only takes a
few seconds to figure it out.
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4. Fat, protein,
and carbs ratio. Here's your first math test, but it's a simple one. When
choosing a food, you probably already know a few things about it. If it's
butter, you'll expect all fat; candy will be high in sugar, and things that sit
on a shelf may have a lot of sodium. For meals, however, you'll want to
take a quick notation of the amount of fat, protein, and carbs. If you're on a
strict diet, this ratio is very important but if you're not, you just want some
balance. A nice round number is 40% carbs and 30% protein and fat. You can then
assume that your prepared "meals" would be better if they reflect a similar
balance. Proteins and carbs have 4 calories per gram, and fats have 9. So you
want the number of fat grams to be less than the other two. A quick method is
to use a 1:2:3 ratio, with fat being 1, protein 2, and carbs 3. Let's visualize
for a sec. Pick up a pack of frozen low-fat chicken
burritos, flip it over, and eye the Nutrition Facts label:
- Fat: 2 g, Sat fat
.5 g, Trans fat 0 g
- Sugar: (Look
under Carbohydrates and see nothing. This means there is no sugar.)
- Sodium: 500
mg
- Fat: 2 g,
Carbohydrates: 20 g, Protein: 12 g
Now let's
analyze. Since we're shopping for a meal that's low in fat, it's probably
because we know that we get enough fat somewhere else in the day. Most of us
have no problem getting fat in our diet, so this would be normal. A quick
glance at the fat and sugar content leads to a big thumbs up. Notice I've
skipped looking at calories. That's because it's calories per serving. We may
not know what a serving is and, remember, we want to do as little math as
possible. We can just assume we'll eat in servings, so that's what we're
analyzing. You will want to check what a serving is later but, for now, we're
tying to buy healthy foods and not determine how much of it to eat. Next is
sodium, which we expect to be a bit high because it's a prepackaged food. As
one of five meals in a day, 500 mg is 20% of the RDA (they do the math for
you), which is fine. Finally, the burrito doesn't follow the 1:2:3 scale, but
we were already expecting this to be off because it's "low fat." The
protein-to-carbs ratio of 12 to 20 seems pretty close to 2 to 3, so check it
off. How close is "close"? There is no rule, but if the numbers were, say, 10
and 60, we might look for something else, unless this was to be served with a
pure protein dish. Total time investment, so far, about 10 seconds.
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5. Length of
Ingredients list. Now just take a quick glance at where it says
Ingredients. If it's under about 10 items I won't even look at it. If
it's so long that I don't want to spend the time reading it, I put the item
back because I know this will mean a long list of things I can't pronounce, and
I don't want to eat things I can't say. If it's somewhere in the middle, I may
take a closer look and exceed my 15 seconds but, in general, I keep this act
simple. There are a few "evil offender" ingredients that people tend to look
for, but we've covered them. By checking off the trans fat, sugar, and sodium
above we're assured there won't be any MSG, high fructose corn syrup, or
hydrogenated oils down here already.
By adding a mere 15
seconds per item, you may not have the perfect diet, but you can certainly make
sure it's not terrible. This is not an exact science, but your diet doesn't
have to be either. Eat better, and get more exercise. Beyond this we're
nitpicking. Sure, we're talking CliffsNotes fitness only. Unfortunately, that's
often all we have time for. Fortunately, it's more than half the battle.
And speaking of time,
that's it for today. Next time,
we'll talk
about your sweet tooth and how to deal with it, and take a look at how
artificial sweeteners affect your diet. |
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