Deciphering food labels is hard. They can be very confusing. There are lots of words and nutrition terms that aren’t clear to most average food consumers. Sometimes it feels like you need a degree in nutrition to read and understand food labels.
Nutrition Terms to Know:
💚 “Organic” – Long story short… The U.S. Department of Agriculture allows the use of the USDA Organic seal on products that are 95% organic… meaning the other 5% of ingredients are questionable.
Simple solution: Eat foods that ARE organic, not foods that HAVE organic ingredients.
🧡 Artificial Sweeteners – Chemicals like aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame K, and neotame are so sweet that they can change your palate and actually cause you to crave more sugar. These chemicals are linked to serious health conditions and cancers.
💜 “Low Sugar” – This usually means there are fake sugars like Aspartame. Most artificial sweeteners are several times sweeter than traditional sugar.
For example, Splenda is almost 600x as sweet as sugar. This causes your taste buds to get used to overly sweet foods and makes you MORE addicted to sweet foods.
🤎 “Low Fat” – This usually means more fake ingredients, possibly more sugar, and much less satisfying…. Meaning you may end up eating more calories anyway!
💛 Dietary Fiber – The part of plant foods that we cannot digest. Found mainly in whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. Fiber helps fill you up, helps to maintain a healthy weight, lowers your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and some types of cancer, can help lower your cholesterol, and relieves constipation. You need at least 25 to 38 grams daily. To be considered high in fiber, a food must contain at least 5 grams per serving.
💙 Enriched – Enriched foods have nutrients added to them to replace those lost during food processing. B vitamins, for example, are lost when wheat is processed into white flour, so these nutrients are later added back to bread, pasta, and other products.
🖤 Fortified – Fortified foods have vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients added to them that weren’t there originally. Milk, for example, is fortified with vitamin D, a nutrient that helps you absorb milk’s calcium. Micronutrients are necessary for many important body functions. Your body can’t make its own micronutrients. They must come from your diet.
❤️ Hydrogenated – Hydrogenation turns a liquid fat such as vegetable oil into a semi-solid, more shelf-stable fat, such as margarine. Most oils are only partially hydrogenated, which creates harmful trans fats that can raise cholesterol. Trans fats are commonly found in cookies, icings, frostings, frozen pizzas, coffee creamers, and microwave popcorn. They are a big part of the American desserts and snacks landscape.
So what do you think about food labels? Do you feel like you understand them or are they confusing to you? Comment below or email me and let’s talk about how we can help you understand food labels and choose better nutrition for you!
