By John Hand –
Reading is fundamental, as has been well reported. Unfortunately, too many disregard this adage, especially when it comes to breaking down food labels. But understanding specifically what is in the food that people put in their bodies is a crucial step to maintaining a healthy diet.
The rub for many consumers is that they skip over reading the ingredients on food labels. In fact, a recent study found that only one-third of consumers actually read labels. One reason is that labels have confusing formats filled with unusual ingredient names. The good news is that a PhD isn’t required to dissect a nutrition label. Instead, there are a few simple flags to look for on a label to know if something is healthy or not, especially when it comes to salt, fats and sugars.
The first step is to understand how a nutrition label is constructed. For example, the ingredients featured at the top of the label are the most used ingredients in the food. This means that any red flag items that appear at the top of a label may be a sign that the food in consideration should be avoided.
It is also important to realize that food manufacturers can easily trick consumers by labeling sugar with a different name. This can easily lead to consuming too much sugar, which increases caloric intake and heart-related problems.
This tactic can be especially effective because there are 56 different names used for sugar. Many of the names are convoluted and may seem unrecognizable, but a few of the more common are inverted sugar, corn sweetener, dextran, molasses, malt syrup, high fructose corn syrup, maltose and cane juice. Perhaps a bigger problem is that a great number of these sugar alternatives are cheap for food manufacturers to make and therefore more likely to end up in the final product.
When deciphering a nutrition label, it is, therefore, important to look at the amount of added sugars. Some foods have natural sugars, which are generally better to consume and more digestible, but added sugars are what the manufacturer includes to enhance the taste of the product. The total sugars are the combination of the natural sugar and the added sugar. But the added sugar is what is included on top of the natural sugars.
Trans fats are another clear sign of an unhealthy food item. Trans fats can lead to high cholesterol and heart disease. Similarly to sugar alternatives, trans fats are cheap to manufacture. They also extend the shelf life of the food product. A typical trans-fat is hydrogenated oil. These oils often show up in baked goods, creamers and margarine. Food companies are moving to palm oil as a substitute. While not a trans-fat, palm oil is still a saturated fat.
The average American consumes way too much salt. On average, Americans eat 3,500 milligrams of salt daily, while the American Heart Association recommends no more than 2,300 milligrams. Most of the salt people take in comes from what’s been added to a food product. This is why identifying the amount of sodium on a label is vital. Just like trans and saturated fats, too much sodium can lead to cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure.
In addition to looking out for fats, sodium and sugars, it is important to consider several other tricks in working through a food label. “Multigrain,” for example, simply indicates more than one grain is used in the food. “Natural” means the producer used at least one natural product in the making of the food product and “low fat” means less fat, but often more sugar.
Ultimately, food labels don’t have to be scary. But they do have to be read if healthy nutrition is the aim.
