READING & UNDERSTANDING FOOD LABELS

by Debbie Markel, CH, CNHP

PART 1

           Almost every food and beverage we buy is required to display a food label that explains its nutritional values, but understanding these labels can sometimes be confusing.  Learning exactly what’s in the foods we eat can help us make more informed decisions and healthier choices.  It will also enable those of us who are on restricted diets to keep from eating foods that contain ingredients we shouldn’t have.

Before we dissect a label, it helps to know how many calories and other food values an average person should consume in a day.  The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) provides the following dietary nutrient recommendations for people who are healthy and don’t have any special medical issues:

RECOMMENDED AVERAGE UPPER LIMIT DAILY INTAKE IN HEALTHY INACTIVE ADULTS

 As you can see, these are the maximum limits.  People who are on restricted calorie, fat, cholesterol, sugar or sodium diets may need less.

            Next, let’s look at a label.  This one is for a single serving microwave pizza.  Please note that the calories in the pizza are 560, so if someone is on a 2,000 calorie a day diet, this one pizza would make up 28% of a day’s worth of calories, which is about average for one meal.  However, if someone is on a 1,600 calorie a day diet, this would represent 35% of a total day’s calories.  While the total fat content isn’t bad for one meal based on 2,000 calories a day, the saturated fat, which contributes more to cardiovascular disease, is 13 grams, or 65% of a day’s total allowance.  A person who eats this would have to be extra-careful about controlling their intake of saturated fats for the rest of the day.  Also, they may have already eaten bacon and eggs for breakfast.  In that case, eating this pizza may have pushed them over their recommended daily intake of saturated fats. Another danger area from eating this pizza is from the sodium content.  1,090 milligrams is 45% of the daily recommendation of 2,400 milligrams, so again, someone would have to be very careful with sodium the rest of the day, especially if they have high blood pressure or other reasons to control their sodium intake.

            Most Americans exceed the recommended daily protein allowances by quite a lot.  As you can see from the food label, 23 grams of protein in this one meal represents almost half of the protein allowance on the 2,000 calorie a day diet.  According to www.dietitian.com, high protein intake stresses our kidneys and does not result in greater muscle gain, even for weight lifters and athletes.

            Believe it or not, there is sugar content in this pizza.  Perhaps the sugars came from natural sources, like tomatoes, or maybe sugars were added to the tomato sauce.  The list of ingredients (not shown) would tell us if sugar was added to the pizza.  By paying careful attention to food labels, we can learn how much sugar we consume daily and monitor that number.  Added sugars contribute to calories without providing any nutritional benefit.  Also be aware that getting 25 grams of fiber a day can be a challenge.  Fiber is mainly found in whole grains, fruits and vegetables.  There is virtually no fiber in animal foods or processed flour products.

            Finally, it’s a good idea to pay close attention to the serving size of a food product.  For example, my husband’s cereal, Post Selects Great Grains, shows that a serving size equals ½ cup, which means all of the calories, fat and other nutritional data applies to just ½ cup of cereal.  My husband eats about 1 ½ cups of cereal at one time, so to calculate his nutrient totals for breakfast, we would have to multiply each of the values by 3.  Looking at serving sizes can be a real eye-opener.  Most of the time, we serve ourselves about twice as much as the label suggests.  You can imagine how the calories, fat and sodium add up quickly when we eat more than the recommended serving size.

             A lot of us don’t understand why we can’t lose weight, even when we watch what we eat.  What we eat is very relevant, but how much we eat is even more important.  Reading food labels and understanding serving sizes and nutrient content is the first step to planning a healthier diet.  Next time, we’ll examine ingredients and their effect on nutrition.

PART 2

          Food ingredients can sometimes sound like they’re written in a foreign language!  Words like propylene glycol alginate and calcium propionate are hard enough to pronounce, much less understand.  When food was sold right from farms, we knew exactly what was in it.  Manufactured foods present different challenges because they have to be packed, shipped, and displayed in stores, and they need long shelf-lives.  It’s very important to learn about food ingredients, however, so we can make smart choices about what we put into our bodies.  Sometimes the names can be deceiving.

            Manufacturers put different types of additives in food for various reasons (see Box 1).  The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI) advises that manufacturers are bound by law not to use carcinogenic (cancer-causing) chemicals, but often the tests on those chemicals are done on small numbers of animals, usually rats.  The results may not accurately reflect the varied characteristics of the human population.  Not all food additives are dangerous, however, despite their scary names.  Here are a few examples of some safe additives:

            Alpha tocopherol is nothing but Vitamin E and is used to retard spoilage.

            Ascorbic acid is Vitamin C and is also used as a preservative.      

            Carrrageenan is a thickener and stabilizer obtained from seaweed and is safe in small amounts.

            EDTA is a natural chelating agent that also keeps food from going rancid.

            Gums (Arabic, Guar, Locust Bean, etc.) are thickeners and emulsifiers from natural sources, like trees.

Some additives aren’t that safe.  Some examples of a few additives to avoid are the following:

Aspartame is also known as Equal or Nutrasweet.  The FDA receives numerous adverse incidents about it ranging from headaches to muscle pain to stomach cramps.  Its link to cancer and multiple sclerosis has been debated by experts for years. 

BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) is in cereals and other foods to keep oils from becoming rancid.  It increases our risk of cancer and can be safely replaced by Vitamin E.

BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) – see BHA.

Cochineal extract is a coloring extracted from the eggs of the cochineal beetle and is found in food and cosmetics.  It has been shown to cause allergic reactions from hives to anaphylactic shock.

Olestra is a fat substitute that not only can cause diarrhea, but can prevent our bodies from absorbing important nutrients from our foods, like alpha- and beta-carotene, lycopene, and lutein.           

            Quinine is a flavoring used in bitter drinks like tonic water and bitter lemon.  It has been shown to cause birth defects, so anyone who is pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant shouldn’t ingest it at all.

A comprehensive list of additives can be found at CPSI’s website, http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm.  While I don’t necessarily agree with some of their opinions or safety classifications of additives, they do have great descriptions of each and what it does.

            Next, it is important to realize that ingredients on labels are listed in descending order of dominance in the food.  For example, if “carrots” is the first ingredient listed, then there are more carrots than anything else in that food.  For a real eye-opening example of what you may be feeding your kids, let’s take a look at the ingredients in Cocoa Puffs cereal:

Sugar, Corn Meal, Hershey Cocoa, Cocoa Syrup, Wheat Starch, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Modified Wheat Starch, Cocoa Processed W/Alkali, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Fructose, Beet Powder, Caramel Color, Trisodium Phosphate, Artificial Flavor, Zinc, Iron Mineral Nutrients, Vitamin C Sodium Ascorbate, Vitamin B6 Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin B2 Riboflavin, Vitamin B1 Thiamin Mononitrate, A B Vitamin Folic Acid, Vitamin B12, Freshness Preserved by BHT.

Notice that “sugar” is the primary ingredient.  Sugar provides no nutritional value and is considered by nutritionists to be empty calories.  Partially hydrogenated soybean oil is a trans-fat that all nutrition experts agree contributes to cardiovascular disease.  Fructose is just more sugar, but made from fruit; trisodioum phosphate is a preservative that’s also used in household cleaning products; artificial flavorings can have adverse effects on health; and BHT can increase our risk of cancer.  Whatever vitamins are in this cereal have been added and aren’t naturally derived from its ingredients.  Now, let’s look at the ingredients in another cereal, Panda Puffs by Nature's Path:

Organic corn meal, organic evaporated cane juice, organic peanut butter, sea salt, non-GMO (genetically modified organisms) Vitamin E (tocopherals).

This cereal has sugar in the form of cane juice, but sugar is second on the list.  It has no artificial or chemical ingredients and is preserved with Vitamin E.  Having peanut butter in it makes it attractive to kids’ tastes, too.

Finally, knowing the difference between “enriched wheat flour” and “whole wheat flour” is important.  “Enriched wheat flour” is simply regular, refined white flour.  Some products, including kids’ cereals, now boast that they contain “whole grains.”  But since you now know that the first ingredient on the label is the primary ingredient in a food, you can see if the whole grains are listed first or not.  If not, the food isn’t a true “whole grain” item.  The nutritional difference is large.  Whole grains include the germ and bran that give us fiber, vitamins B-6 and E, magnesium, zinc, folic acid, and chromium, all of which have been removed from white flour.

The bottom line is that we should all read labels and choose carefully.  Understanding what goes into our foods can make us smarter and healthier consumers and less willing to be manipulated by advertisers.  Those clever commercials don’t tell the whole story, so it’s every shopper for him- or herself.  Now you can go to the grocery store with your newly-developed label-reading skills and eat well for better health!

Debbie Markel, Certified Herbalist and Certified Natural Health Professional, is the proprietor of Apothecarian Herbals in Powhatan.  She can be reached at 804-598-5352.

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