How to Read Nutrition Facts
You see them on virtually everything you eat. In most cases, nutrition facts are a federally-mandated requirement for food makers. They inform eaters about the ingredients and nutritional value of what we eat.
For a good reason, too. These days, there are more chemicals than ever in our foods. Everything from chips to bread has sugar in them to taste better and additives that keep them fresh on the shelf for longer.
It’s important to know what you’re eating, especially these days when more people buy pre-made meals or eat out more than we did a generation ago. Largely gone are the days of single-income households where one partner stayed home and cooked wholesome meals. Now, millions of Americans rely on throwing something fast in the oven or opening a box to have dinner half-made for us already.
One of the biggest problems we face regarding dietary health is that the most affordable and best-tasting foods are often the worst for us. They’re full of artificial flavorings, too much salt, sugar, and unhealthy fats. Knowing how to read nutrition facts helps people understand what we’re eating and, ideally, what to buy vs. avoid.
Here are some tips on how to read nutrition facts and what you should look for.
1. Take a Look at the Calorie Count
When you flip the container or package over to read the label, one of the first things you should look at is total calories and calories from fat. No matter what anyone else tells you, you’re never going to lose weight or gain weight with a calorie imbalance. Calories are the best way to measure total energy going in and out of your body. When you eat something, your body processes it into energy. You burn off calories by walking, standing, running, etc. Yes, you burn some calories by doing nothing, but the more you move, the more you’ll burn.
Any excess calories that aren’t burnt off from exercising and other activity are turned into fat and stored in the body for later. That is, after all, what fat is. It’s excess food that our body thinks we may need for later. Problems arise, however, when we eat too much consistently and our body stores too much fat.
If you want to get rid of fat, you have to burn more calories than you consume. That’s why so many health experts recommend tracking the calories you eat. It gives you a better idea of how much energy you’re eating each day.
A small candy bar, for example, has the same calorie count as a much larger portion of carrots or cucumbers. Eating a lot of high-sugar, high-calorie foods often means you’ll be eating more to feel full.
Just think about, for example, how many Starburst candies you would have to eat as a meal to feel full. You’ll probably end up feeling sick, but at the end of the day, you’ll have eaten hundreds more calories than if you ate something like chicken breast and broccoli. Calorie counts are extremely important.
Most experts recommend a daily caloric intake of around 2,000 calories. Think about that the next time you go to buy a drink and see that it’s 300 calories, or go to the coffee shop and buy a drink with 800 calories in it. Is it worth drinking an entire meal? Calories help give perspective on what we’re eating throughout the day.
2. Don’t Miss the Serving Size
This is a major thing that many people miss entirely, but the serving size listed on the nutrition facts is often much less than you’d usually consume in one sitting. Companies do this to try and mask how many calories you’re eating or drinking when you buy something.
Let’s take, for instance, drinks. If you buy a large Gatorade bottle or a Yoohoo chocolate drink, you can turn the bottle around and look at the nutrition facts. You may think to yourself, “Oh, it’s only got a couple hundred calories in the bottle.” Wrong! If you look at servings per container located somewhere near the calorie tally, then you’ll see there are often a couple or a few servings per bottle.
You need to multiply the calories per serving by the servings per container to get the true calorie count of a full package or bottle.
A nice little sleight of hand, isn’t it? Some of these drink or candy makers have the gall to put half servings on a package. They’ll say a bottle has 2.5 or 3.5 servings. Who is going to drink a half serving?
3. Drop Down to Sugars
There’s a lot of useful information on nutrition labels, and if you’re just starting out dieting or tracking your daily food intake, then calories are likely your main focus. But no matter the health goal you have in mind, unchecked sugar consumption can derail your progress or worse, have lasting impacts on your overall health.
Sugar is tough because it’s in things you wouldn’t even think it would be in. Sugar is in bread, milk, and a million savory snacks. It adds flavor and gets you addicted to eating bad food!
Eating too much sugar often gets you into a harmful cycle of hunger cravings. When you eat something, the sugar levels in your body spike, they make you feel good and give you a burst of energy. On the comedown, though, you feel a crash, and your body starts to scream at you to eat more sugar.
It’s easy to become addicted to sugar. A lot of people are already addicted without knowing it. When they start to diet, they get headaches, feel irritable, have trouble focusing, and experience several other symptoms. It’s likely in part caused by starving your body of sugar.
So don’t forget to skip down past fat and carbohydrates on the nutrition facts label to see how much sugar is in what you’re eating.
4. Protein & Vitamin Content is Important, Too.
Not everything on nutritional labels is bad. Many people use nutrition facts as a helpful guide to buying foods that will help them achieve their health and wellness goals. One thing, for example, that can help you feel full for longer and build muscle is protein. The grams of protein in your foods are listed on your packaged groceries as well, so that you can make an informed choice before you hit the checkout line.
You can also look for daily percentages of vitamins listed on labels. A lot of different items will list how much Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin C, etc., are in each serving you eat. Opt for foods with higher daily percentage values to ensure you’re getting the healthy vitamins your body needs to stay in great shape.
The Skinny
These tips are just the start of understanding what you’re eating and how much you should be eating. Reading labels will inform your portion control and stop you from overeating junk food. You’ll feel better and, eventually, you’ll start to gravitate toward healthier foods that give you more substance and fewer calories, sugar, unhealthy fat, salt, etc.
Starting from scratch can be tough. Don’t be hard on yourself. Learn as you go. The more informed you are about the foods you eat, the better off you and others around you are in the long run.
At the end of the day, a more informed eater is a better eater, so know your nutrition facts before you buy.
