With the start of a new school year just around the corner, it’s time to put away our “summer indulgences” attitude and put on our “thinking healthier” mindset.
Whether you are getting the kids ready for school or just getting back on track for the fall, this is the perfect time of year to get back to healthy eating. One of the most important ways to do that is to know how to quickly scan a food label.
Here are 5 quick tips for reading a food label:
1) Look at the amount of SUGAR (4g = 1 tsp)
A food label will list Sugar in grams (g). Divide the number of grams by 4 to find out how many teaspoons of sugar are in a serving. For example, a can of Coke has 39g of sugar. 39 divided by 4 = 9 ¾ teaspoons of sugar.
2) Look at the SERVING SIZE
Sometimes the nutritional label will seem pretty good – not too much sugar or salt. But beware of small serving sizes. You may want to eat the whole package, but if there are 2 servings per package, you have to double the amounts of the nutritional label. For example, an Arizona Iced Tea can reads 18 g of sugar per serving. 18 divided by 4 = 4.5 teaspoons of sugar. Seems better than the can of Coke right? But the serving size is for 250 mL, and the can is 680 mL. So if you are drinking the whole can, you are actually getting 12¼ teaspoons of sugar. Tricky!
3) Quick scan of the INGREDIENTS
With a quick scan of the ingredients, ask yourself:
1) How many ingredients are there? The fewer the better. A long ingredient list is a red flag for potentially hidden sugars, fats, and chemicals.
2) Can you picture the ingredients? You can probably picture things like water, eggs, milk, flour, oats, honey, etc. You probably can’t picture things like maltodextrin, acesulfame potassium, monosodium glutamate, etc. Don’t trust ingredients you can’t pronounce!
4) Look for HIDDEN SUGARS
Food manufacturers know we are on to the fact that sugars are bad for us. But they want to keep it in our food because it tastes good and will keep us coming back for more. Here are some hidden names for sugars:
1) Anything that ends in “ose” – glucose, fructose, sucrose, dextrose, maltose, etc.
2) The words “syrup” or “sweetener” – barley syrup, rice syrup, corn sweetener, etc.
3) The word “sugar” – cane sugar, beet sugar, invert sugar, palm sugar, raw sugar, etc.
4) The word “juice” – dehydrated/evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, etc.
5) Some trickier names – carbitol, diglycerides, disaccharides, erythritol, Florida crystals, glucitol, glucoamine, hexitol, inversol, isomalt, maltodextrin, malted barley, malts, mannitol, nectars, pentose, rice malt, sorbitol, sorghum, sucanet, zylose, etc.
* See this blog post for more on the dangers of High Fructose Corn Syrup and how to spot it on a food label
5) Look for HIDDEN TRANS FATS
Trans fats are renowned to be bad for you, especially by increasing your risk of heart disease. But, food manufacturers have tricky ways to keep trans fats in their food. Most trans fats now are labelled as: “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils. The oil can be any oil from palm oil, to corn oil, to sunflower oil.
To make matters worse, food manufacturers are allowed to state “0 trans fats” if the product has less than 0.5g of trans fats per serving. You will find foods that say “0 trans fats” in big letters on the front of the box, and the nutritional label will read “0 trans fats”. But the ingredients will still list hydrogenated oils.
Avoid any oils that are “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated”.
Naturopathic Doctor
