Food Labels 101

by Jeremy Likness

It is important that you know how to shop for quality foods. This section explains how to maximize your trips to the grocery store by revealing exactly how to read labels and find healthy foods. It is not very complicated, but a little knowledge can go a long ways when it comes to healthy shopping.

Here Are A Few General Guidelines For Looking At Food Labels

• It is the ingredients and the nutrition facts that are important. One without the other doesn't tell the full tale.
• Ingredients list are listing in descending order of predominance. This means that the first ingredient is the most prevalent in the product, while the last ingredient has the least amount in the product.
• In general, you'll want sugars and salts to be listed last in the ingredients list
• If you are looking for a whole fat food, remember that the labels list fats in grams. The percentage listed next to the fats is percentage of daily intake, not percentage of fat calories in the product. You need to look at the top of the label, "calories of fat," and divide that by total calories to figure out the percentage. You can estimate this - if the fat calories are around ½ of the total calories, then the fat calories are about 50%.
• When looking for carbohydrate products, try to choose products that are the least amount processed. Here are a few tips:
  • Breads should have the words "whole" or "stone ground" first on the ingredients list. Often, you might see "unbleached enriched flour, whole wheat..." which is not the bread you are looking for - this is processed bread with some whole grains added for color. The first ingredient should be whole grains.
  • A quality carbohydrate should have fiber and sugar. Try to avoid carbohydrates with zero fiber. Carbohydrates that are nothing but fiber will also not provide optimal nourishment- a combination of both is good. I typically look for at least 1/6 of the total carbohydrate count as fiber - so something with 20 grams of carbohydrate would have around 3 - 4 grams of fiber.
  • It is your decision whether or not you wish to consume highly processed foods. I choose to look for whole, natural foods. If there is too much Latin on the label - i.e. Ingredients I can't pronounce or don't recognize, I leave it on the shelf!
• Canned goods, frozen dinners, and other pre-packaged items are typically very high in sodium. You are better off purchasing the whole, individual ingredients and then making your own meals from recipes. You can store these in containers and freeze them for later.

Shuffling Ingredients

Foods are often "grouped" on ingredients lists to present the items in a specific way. Sometimes this is for legitimate reasons, and sometimes it can be downright tricky. Most people understand that ingredients should be listed in descending order of quantity -- in other words, the ingredient that occurs the most in the product should also be listed first. Therefore, someone looking for a protein bar will be happy to pick up something that reads:

super-di-awesome Protein blend (hydrolyzed cow toes, whey), maltodextrin

The label will list protein, and zero sugars.

Of course, there is more going on here. That special protein blend -- what is it, really? Let's say our ingredients list had 10 grams of whey, 11 grams of cow toes (ew!) and 12 grams of maltodextrin. That list would need to be in descending order of quantity, or "maltodextrin, hydrolyzed cow toes, whey."

Anyone familiar with sugars knows that while maltodextrin doesn't affect the sugar count, it is very high glycemic and therefore not something you would want to be the primary ingredient (unless this was a post-workout shake). So looking at this label, the average consumer would say to themselves, "High in sugar, tons of poor protein, and only a little whey."

So what to do? Simple. The company groups the cow toes and whey together. This is the "super-di-awesome protein blend." Because the sum of the ingredients is 10 + 11 = 21, this new "blend" can be listed before the maltodextrin, with the components of the blend listed in order.