Category — Food Labels

Back in October I wrote about the new “Smart Choices” food rating system that’s showing up in grocery store aisles across the country.  Any program that highlights Fruit Loops as a “Smart Choice” deserves serious scrutiny.  Take a look at this recent piece in the LA Times.

The program is now on hold because of the FDA suspects it might mislead consumers into buying processed foods that are high in sugar, sodium and fat.  USA Today is reporting this latest highlight.

Bottom line – don’t look solely at the front of a food package to make a purchasing decision.  Read the nutritionals and ingredients for yourself to see if the science supports the claims made on the front.

It doesn’t matter where you do your food shopping.  Grocery stores across the country are adopting various strategies for ranking products on their shelves under the guise that it will make it easier for consumers to make healthier choices.

Despite good intentions, I find the systems baffling.  Most of the items I find in the grocery aisles are highly processed and the packaging is wallpapered in health claims and misleading copy.

Take a look at this review of the phenomenon on InteliHealth and come to your own conclusions.

The next time you’re in the grocery aisle (or studying the items already in your pantry), consider this about the information listed toward the bottom of the Nutrition Label.

The lower portion of the Nutrition Facts panel reflects the amounts of different nutrients in a product.  Typically, if the daily percentage of a particular nutrient is between 10% and 19% , the food is considered to be a good source of that nutrient.

Remember that Cholesterol line on those food Nutrition labels?

Most of the cholesterol our bodies need is made by the liver.  Organ meats, whole milk dairy, shrimp and egg yolks contain high levels of cholesterol and when consumed in high quantity in a person’s diet, can lead to heart attack and/or stroke.  Note to self – keep those aforementioned items in check.

Also, if a food product makes a “no cholesterol” claim, that means that no animal fat was used in making the product, but it does not necessarily mean that the food is low in fat.

We hear all the time that our kids are getting too much sugar.  Sugar in foods provides us with empty calories, calories that are not equipped to serve any healthful function within our bodies.  It can be found on labels in many forms – fructose, sucrose, maltose, dextrose – basically anything ending in “-ose”. 

I work with kids a lot and have started having fun with a terrific exercise I found in the February 2009 edition of Family Fun magazine entitled “Beat the Sugar Blues”. 

A brilliant young man, 13 years old, did a demonstration of common foods and their corresponding sugar contents by utilizing sugar cubes (2 grams of sugar per cube).  There are no daily reference values for sugar, but a good rule of thumb is 48 grams per day MAX.  That’s 12 teaspoons/12 sugar packets/6 sugar cubes. 

According to the article, a 20oz bottle of soda contains 17 teaspoons of sugar = 17 sugar packets = 34 sugar cubes = 68 GRAMS OF SUGAR!   The pioneer of this Family Fun article built a WALL of sugar cubes to illustrate his point.  A Hi-C Juice Box has 6 teaspoons of sugar/6 sugar packets/> 12 sugar cubes.  That’s ONE item in a kid’s lunch box! 

Get out your calculator and try this out at home.

All of us need sodium for our bodies to function well.   It regulates blood pressure and fluid balance.  Overdoing it, however, can be dangerous with regard to high blood pressure and heart disease.

The daily recommended daily intake of sodium is just over 2000mg (ONE TEASPOON).  The next time you go shopping, look through the pasta sauce and soup options, for example, and surprise yourself by noting how much sodium is in one serving (keeping in mind, once again, that you need to take a look at the serving size line on the label – one can of soup might contain 2 servings).

I’ve recently started making my own pasta sauce at home…

One can of crushed tomatoes (no sodium)

Garlic

Diced onions

Italian seasonings of my choosing

Red pepper flakes

A bit of salt and pepper to taste, which I can control. 

Not only do I feel more confident about what I’m serving the folks around my table, but it takes about as long to prepare as unscrewing a jar of the store bought variety and heating it up.  AND it’s a heck of a lot cheaper.

I’ve just launched Indigo Rabbit sales in CT today with a live in-store demo at Whole Foods Market in West Hartford.  I sold out in 90 minutes!

I think it’s important to sit down and put all this nutritional info into realistic context.

I had a conversation the other morning with a group of women I hold in very high regard.  They are a compassionate, ambitious, and discerning group and they had an excellent point to make.

These women have been eager to learn more and more about decoding nutrition labels and making healthful decisions about the foods they bring into their homes.  They described recent shopping visits (now as avid label reading consumers) as empowering, eye-opening, disheartening, sometimes disgusting, and, in the end, totally depressing.  They were, it seemed, dismayed that so many of their favorite foods were downright harmful to their health.  The chant – “Ignorance is Bliss”.

Once you know what to look for – the rotten stuff on food labels – and you can’t  pretend you don’t see it, there’s no turning back.  It’s just like being a committed recycler and then visiting a location that doesn’t facilitate recycling of your morning paper.  You can’t simply throw it in the trash.  You’re tempted to put it in your suitcase and cart it back to your hometown for proper disposal!

Food label reading is the same thing.  Now that the high fructose corn syrup, the hydrogenated oils and trans fats alerts are in your head, you simply can’t shake them out.

The reality is – for the new label reader, it does get easier.  Grocery shopping becomes an adventure, an expedition perhaps?  My kids get a kick out of correcting  me and/or my husband when we inadvertently place a “non-okay” (kiddo term) item in the cart during a shopping excursion.  Taking charge over what we CHOOSE to take in can make you feel refreshingly capable, no matter what your age.

A good guide for the astute label reader is this – the Calories from Fat should be less than 1/3 the total number of Calories per serving.  That means that if an item has 100 Calories per serving, there should be 30 or fewer Calories from Fat per serving.

Now, beneath the Total Fat line, the label will further detail the number of grams of Saturated Fats, Unsaturated Fats, and Trans Fats. 

Saturated Fats come from high fat animal products, such as cheese, whole milk, butter, fatty meats, lard etc.  Avoid Saturated Fats as these can lead to high blood cholesterol and heart disease.

Unsaturated (mono- and poly-) Fats are found in vegetable oils, olives, most nuts, avocados, and fatty fish.  These fats are good for your body in moderation as they are necessary for gland health, brain cell function and digestion.

Trans Fats are found in Hydrogenated Oils, and you know how I feel about those – see entry dated 04/03/09.

On every nutrition panel, the first line item highlights Serving Size. 

Be honest with yourself here.  My cereal bowl in the morning certainly contains more than 1 measured cup full of cereal.  I need to recognize that all data reported in the nutrition panel on the side of my cereal box reflects analysis based on 1 cup (considerably LESS than what I’ve served myself). 

Another example – I read the nutrition label on a packaged frozen chicken pot pie at the grocery store recently.  When I looked closely, I noticed that it stated a serving size as 1/2 of the pie, i.e. that tiny box was meant to contain TWO servings.

Who buys a small chicken pot pie and doesn’t eat the whole thing?

It’s important to pay close attention to this very first item on the Nutrition Facts panel, because all further information is linked to the specific amount of food listed.