Tips To Understanding Nutrition Labels:
When you pick up a product on a shelf, the first thing you should do is turn it around and read the nutrition label to really see if the ingredients it contains are worthy of putting into your body!
T I P S :
-The ingredients are listed in order starting with the ones that the product contains most of!
-The less ingredients on the label the better (try to stick to 5 ingredients or less!), and if you are able to recognize the ingredients then even better! If you don’t recognize or can’t pronounce the ingredients, it’s safe to say you should probably put it back.
-Pay attention to serving size, as most contain more than one serving so eating the all of the contents of the bag/box would mean multiplying calories, sugar, etc!
-Look for foods with 0 trans fat, and avoid those with ingredients listed as “partially or fully hydrogenated oils” these contain large amounts of trans fats and other modified fat substances!
-Look for minimum sodium content
-Choose your carbohydrates wisely!
-Avoid simple carbohydrates in the ingredient list such as refined sugars and added sugars, and read the amount of sugar content each product contains. To put it into perspective, if a product contains 20 grams of sugar, that is equivalent to 5 teaspoons of sugar!
-Sugar can make a cameo in many tricky ways so look for these words to avoid on nutrition labels: dextrose, fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, levulose, maltose, sucrose, mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, beet sugar, corn sugar, corn sweetener, high fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, isomalt, maltodextrins, maple sugar, sorghum or turbinado sugar. These are all different ways to say there is added high calorie, low nutrient sugar inside!
-Instead, go for sugars with nutritional benefits instead like Brown rice syrup, honey, and molasses!
-Go for whole grains! If you don’t see the word “whole in front of the name of the grain, it’s not a whole grain. “Enriched” flour and “Unbleached” white flours don’t count, as they’re stripped of their fiber content and processed.
Taking a moment to do a little reading as it goes a long way! You are what you put in your body after all, so make sure its clean !