How to Read Nutrition Labels
How to read nutrition labels and why it is so very important
Does this sound familiar?
You follow your diet to a T, you watch your carbs, fats and calories yet you don’t lose weight and in many cases you actually gain weight.
Although you think that you have just eaten 1 serving of pasta or cereal if you were to check out the nutrition label of the product you will find that you have consumed 2-3 servings.
No wonder your gaining weight!
Over the years, our portion sizes have gotten out of control, they are much larger than they were just 20 years ago. Bagels are larger, an order of regular fries is almost 3 times larger than they were in 1970 and even the size of soda bottles are larger than their 8 ounce counter parts.
Yes, the sizes for take out, fast food and restaurants are much larger than they were so we really don’t understand what a “correct” size portion is.
Getting back to the bagel –if you were to look at the nutrition information at the bakery you would notice that your plain bagel is actually 2 portion sizes — not 1. They may give you 1 bagel but you should only eat half, if you want to eat only 1 portion.
This is why it is so important to get to know the nutritional information of what you eat and learn how to read a nutrition label correctly.
Ok, so what is a What is the Serving Size: standardized amount (like cups or tablespoons or pieces) followed by the equivalent amount in the metric system (such as grams). Each product will have its own serving (portion) size even if 2 products appear to be similar.
The first few times that you actually measure out your food, you’ll see how much you have been over eating even though you thought that you have been “good”. If your like me -you’ll actually be shocked to see what a correct portion size is.
How Many Servings Per Container: Most packaged foods contain multiple servings in a single package, making it easy to double, triple, quadruple, etc. the caloric intake from that of a single serving.
What are the Amount of Calories Per Serving: Typically, a single serving of around 40 calories is considered low-calorie, around 100 is considered moderate, and 400 is considered high-calorie.
Keeping tabs on the amount of servings you take in, based on the caloric intake per serving, is one great way to manage your weight. Another is to balance out eating high-calorie foods with some low-calorie foods earlier or later in the day.
The next step to using nutrition labels to help control your weight is to get the most nutrition out of the calories you take in.
Use the Percentage Daily Value to tell you how rich in each of the required nutrients the food really is.
Daily values are based on a 2000-calorie diet. 5% or less of a nutrient’s %DV is low, 20% or more of a nutrient’s %DV is high. Limit your amount of Total Fat, Cholesterol, and Sodium.
No daily requirement exists for Trans-Fats (the most dangerous kind), though their quantity per serving does appear on the label; so just be sure to keep them to an absolute minimum. Make sure to get plenty of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, and Iron.
Once you have gathered all the information you need, you simply ask yourself if a food choice is a wise choice for you in terms of both calories and nutrients, and whether it makes more sense for you as part of a meal or as a standalone snack.
If the answers to these questions don’t satisfy you for a particular food, then the next question to ask yourself is whether you can find a suitable alternative. The answer that question is almost invariably, ‘Yes’.
