I can't believe it's taken me this long to actually publish a blog about food labels. I owe my best friend and sorority sister Rose, for the motivation. In terms of my knowledge on this topic, I owe that to that Dr. Ann Wertz Garvin; a professor, author, and most importantly a friend. Anyways, I never really understood labels and didn't read them until I was 20 pounds overweight and realizing that something needed to be done. I enrolled in Dr. Garvin's class in the spring of 2008 and since then, it's been history. My major changed, I found my passion, and now I want to educate you. Hopefully you'll be able to understand a little of this jibberish after I try to breakdown the major components. After incessant hours of research on the ingredients I couldn't understand or pronounce, measuring out my servings, and buying way too many nutrition books, I get it; and want to share it with you. I pulled out my Nutrition for Life binder from UW-Whitewater, all of my print outs, portfolios, and reading material, let's decode!
First off, food manufacturers are required by law to share nutritional information with us, but if you don't know how to read or interpret these labels, what good is it? We'll start from top to bottom of a food label most college aged students will recognize, like this one...a typical frozen pepperoni pizza (I'm not calling out the brand). First and foremost, all nutritional labels (unless stated otherwise) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet and they show a comparison for someone on a 2,500 calorie diet. At the top of the label it states that a serving is one pizza, and I personally KNOW after a night on the town the first thing we when we get home is chow down on way more than we should, but that's life. We eventually learn, or at least we should.
Most frozen pizzas say that 1/4 of the pizza is an appropriate serving of it (approximately 2 pieces), but even I know it's hard to eat just two pieces of pizza. Especially cardboard pizza, it's hit or miss with those. You either hit the jackpot or end up with a Frisbee. In most cases your probably only sharing this pizza with one other person. This is where our problem begins.The serving information is based on typical serving sizes that most people eat, and on most labels it states how many servings per container, watch this! An entire can of Spaghettio's has 2.5 servings, so initially it doesn't look too bad, until the can is gone (don't let the "full serving" of vegetables fool you) the junk in these cans doesn't make the "veggies" worth it. But back to the pizza...
Calories are listed next, along with the amount of fat from the calories you're about to consume. This specific label states that you'd be splitting an oven pizza that is almost entirely half fat (you can blame the cheese and processed pepperoni for that one). Ick. Just be careful when it comes to servings, check to see how many it's "supposed" to serve and do your best to stick to it. Confused on portions? Check out the Portion Distortion blog posted a few weeks back.
Everyone knows that fat is the bad guy, but we do need it to survive. Just try to choose food items with less than 3g total fat or 1g saturated fat per 100 calories. I like that rule, and if possible stick to fresh and unprocessed foods. They allow you to eat more and do better things for your body. The amounts are expressed in grams and percentages, rule of thumb (courtesy of Garvin) anything less than 5% is considered low and anything above 15% is high...especially important in terms of saturated fat, fiber, and sodium. Save yourself getting drilled by me in cardiac rehab later and just start paying attention to it. :) Essentially this fat builds up in our arteries and then our heart can't function as efficiently. Without our pumper, we're no good. The other item to look for on a food label is fiber which helps us feel fuller longer, and is great regulating our digestive tract (be careful though-if you're not used to a high fiber diet you might not want to be too far from a bathroom). =D
This particular pizza has almost 75% of the recommended amount of saturated fat in a serving...planning on having dinner later? Looks like it's brown rice and eggplant for you! Just kidding, but really that's a lot of fat for a small meal.
Cholesterol is another part of the label we should be paying some attention to. Do your best to select foods with less than 100mg cholesterol per serving (Hark & Deen, 2006). I've talked about carbohydrates before too, when it comes to carbs choose the complex ones (whole grains, fruit, vegetables) they burn fat, not help you pack it on. I'm a big fiber advocate and maybe I take in too much, but experts say to aim for at least 24g of fiber each day.
*Side note, a lot of Italian and maybe other types of restaurants are now offering a whole wheat or whole grain substitute for their pastas, take advantage of that. It's the little things.
Sodium, I'll be honest here- I. hate. salt. Especially when someone doesn't even give your food a chance and they cover my beautifully baked chicken breast and corn in it. Grr. Sodium is listed in milligrams on labels and you shouldn't consume more than 2,400mg each day. You'll realize how hard that is to do, especially in college. Frozen meals are loaded with sodium, it's even worse with the ones claiming to be lean. They make up for the lack of flavor from fat removal by adding salt-which doesn't change the calorie count. If you have a heart condition, the American Heart Association recommends you don't exceed 1,500 mg; as it increases your blood pressure and makes your heart work a lot harder than it has to.
*Check out the sodium content in the frozen pizza label, absolutely brutal!
Now for protein, if your looking to maintain or lose weight COMPLEX carbohydrates should compose 55%-60% of your diet in combination with fat and protein. Labels also have listings regarding vitamin and intake, and are listed per serving by percentage (percentage rule of thumb still comes into play here).
There are a few labeling exceptions, foods from the deli and bakery, medical foods prepared for patients in need of care, and plain coffee and tea which really have no significant nutritional value as is.
With that said, I tried to cover as much as I could about these darn labels but they are confusing. One last thing I thought would be beneficial as well:
**Fat free: Less than 0.5g fat per serving
Low fat: Less than 3g fat per serving or 50% less fat than a similar product
Lite: The product must have 1/3 fewer calories than a comparable product and also have 50% less calories from fat
Reduced fat: Must contain at least 25% less fat than a similar product
Low cholesterol: Less than 20mg cholesterol per serving and 2g total fat**
(Hark & Deen, 2006)
Eat well, live well.
-Alexis
First off, food manufacturers are required by law to share nutritional information with us, but if you don't know how to read or interpret these labels, what good is it? We'll start from top to bottom of a food label most college aged students will recognize, like this one...a typical frozen pepperoni pizza (I'm not calling out the brand). First and foremost, all nutritional labels (unless stated otherwise) are based on a 2,000 calorie diet and they show a comparison for someone on a 2,500 calorie diet. At the top of the label it states that a serving is one pizza, and I personally KNOW after a night on the town the first thing we when we get home is chow down on way more than we should, but that's life. We eventually learn, or at least we should.
Most frozen pizzas say that 1/4 of the pizza is an appropriate serving of it (approximately 2 pieces), but even I know it's hard to eat just two pieces of pizza. Especially cardboard pizza, it's hit or miss with those. You either hit the jackpot or end up with a Frisbee. In most cases your probably only sharing this pizza with one other person. This is where our problem begins.The serving information is based on typical serving sizes that most people eat, and on most labels it states how many servings per container, watch this! An entire can of Spaghettio's has 2.5 servings, so initially it doesn't look too bad, until the can is gone (don't let the "full serving" of vegetables fool you) the junk in these cans doesn't make the "veggies" worth it. But back to the pizza...
Everyone knows that fat is the bad guy, but we do need it to survive. Just try to choose food items with less than 3g total fat or 1g saturated fat per 100 calories. I like that rule, and if possible stick to fresh and unprocessed foods. They allow you to eat more and do better things for your body. The amounts are expressed in grams and percentages, rule of thumb (courtesy of Garvin) anything less than 5% is considered low and anything above 15% is high...especially important in terms of saturated fat, fiber, and sodium. Save yourself getting drilled by me in cardiac rehab later and just start paying attention to it. :) Essentially this fat builds up in our arteries and then our heart can't function as efficiently. Without our pumper, we're no good. The other item to look for on a food label is fiber which helps us feel fuller longer, and is great regulating our digestive tract (be careful though-if you're not used to a high fiber diet you might not want to be too far from a bathroom). =D
This particular pizza has almost 75% of the recommended amount of saturated fat in a serving...planning on having dinner later? Looks like it's brown rice and eggplant for you! Just kidding, but really that's a lot of fat for a small meal.
Cholesterol is another part of the label we should be paying some attention to. Do your best to select foods with less than 100mg cholesterol per serving (Hark & Deen, 2006). I've talked about carbohydrates before too, when it comes to carbs choose the complex ones (whole grains, fruit, vegetables) they burn fat, not help you pack it on. I'm a big fiber advocate and maybe I take in too much, but experts say to aim for at least 24g of fiber each day.
*Side note, a lot of Italian and maybe other types of restaurants are now offering a whole wheat or whole grain substitute for their pastas, take advantage of that. It's the little things.
Sodium, I'll be honest here- I. hate. salt. Especially when someone doesn't even give your food a chance and they cover my beautifully baked chicken breast and corn in it. Grr. Sodium is listed in milligrams on labels and you shouldn't consume more than 2,400mg each day. You'll realize how hard that is to do, especially in college. Frozen meals are loaded with sodium, it's even worse with the ones claiming to be lean. They make up for the lack of flavor from fat removal by adding salt-which doesn't change the calorie count. If you have a heart condition, the American Heart Association recommends you don't exceed 1,500 mg; as it increases your blood pressure and makes your heart work a lot harder than it has to.
*Check out the sodium content in the frozen pizza label, absolutely brutal!
Now for protein, if your looking to maintain or lose weight COMPLEX carbohydrates should compose 55%-60% of your diet in combination with fat and protein. Labels also have listings regarding vitamin and intake, and are listed per serving by percentage (percentage rule of thumb still comes into play here).
There are a few labeling exceptions, foods from the deli and bakery, medical foods prepared for patients in need of care, and plain coffee and tea which really have no significant nutritional value as is.
With that said, I tried to cover as much as I could about these darn labels but they are confusing. One last thing I thought would be beneficial as well:
**Fat free: Less than 0.5g fat per serving
Low fat: Less than 3g fat per serving or 50% less fat than a similar product
Lite: The product must have 1/3 fewer calories than a comparable product and also have 50% less calories from fat
Reduced fat: Must contain at least 25% less fat than a similar product
Low cholesterol: Less than 20mg cholesterol per serving and 2g total fat**
(Hark & Deen, 2006)
Eat well, live well.
-Alexis
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