The art of label reading - The one thing you should focus on when buying processed, packaged foods
Wait, you may ask, is she recommending to buy processed, packaged foods here? No, not at all but real life happens and we all do it. So stick with me here, please.
According to Statistics Canada, almost 50% of all Canadians “often or always” read nutritional information on packaged foods. With 56%, they most often consult the nutrition facts table.
These statistics are based on the General Social Survey in 2016. I don’t think these numbers are dramatically different today or in other countries. We have been taught over and over again to focus on calories which are a big part of the little white box with black print on the back or side of the package. But let’s step back for a second and start with the front of the package.
What’s on the front of the package?
Most often a colourful spread of words, images of healthy and overly happy people smiling at you and a whole lot of ‘healthwashing’ claims are plastered all over the front of the package. These are marketing terms that are used to make the food appear healthier than it often is. It tricks us into thinking “well, if it’s written on the box and it says “made from real fruit” or “100% natural”, it must be true”. It sounds good and it sure looks better than the box beside it that doesn’t have any statements listed. And even if it is made with real fruit, it doesn’t tell you anything about all the other crap that’s also in the food. Without going too much into these claims – I will do that in another post – fact is that a lot of these claims don’t mean a whole lot.
The nutrition facts label
This panel gives you information about the food’s serving size, the calories, information on dietary fiber, sugar and sodium content. It also tells you the percentage of vitamin and mineral content. First of all, when you look at the serving size, many many many times it is an incredibly small amount compared to how much of the food you will actually eat in one sitting, unless you are a tiny bird, of course. So always remember to multiply these numbers by the serving size that you actually consume. Instead of two little squares of chocolate, you may eat the whole bar, right? Not that this has ever been a critical problem of mine…
Second of all, calories. I’m not a fan of counting calories. In fact, in my meal plans, I will not include nutritional information (unless there is a specific reason for that) because not all calories are created equally and it’s about the quality of the food, not how many calories it has. Counting calories and limiting your intake based on the amount can lead to a whole other set of problems. For example, half a bar (about 19g – they are small!) of these fruit-filled breakfast bars are about 65 calories. One cup of whole strawberries is about 50 calories. Clearly, the nutritional value of both these foods are not the same. That doesn’t make it ok to choose the sugar-loaded breakfast bar over real, whole, unprocessed foods.
The percentage of vitamins and minerals contained in the food doesn’t provide you with any valuable information. The way I see it, is that often processed, packaged foods are first stripped off the natural occurring nutrients and then they are being put back in in a lab (read “fortified with…”). These vitamins are not of the same quality than if they would come from whole foods, the foods you most often find in the perimeter of the grocery store. They are often more difficult to absorb and digest in your body. Another thing is that the daily value recommended is usually lower than what is really required to support our cells and their activity on a daily basis. This being said, I wouldn’t recommend relying on your daily vitamin and supplement intake based on packaged foods.
The only number that I look at on the nutrition fact table is the amount of sugar a food contains. The amount listed includes natural and added sugars, so that you don’t really know how much of the sugar is naturally occurring in the food. However, it can give you a bit of an idea whether the amount of sugar in this product is way too high or somewhat acceptable (which most of the time it’s not). You obviously want to aim for the least amount of sugar, given the many proven negative aspects in terms of the relationship between sugar and disease. If I had to give you a guideline, I would say to aim for no more than 5-7g (definitely not higher than 10g!). BUT please keep in mind that this is very much based on the individual serving size. About 4g of sugar equal 1 teaspoon, just to have a visual. Artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, saccharin or sucralose, are often not included in the gram count but listed under the ingredient list – which brings me to my next point.
To read more on how sugar, salt and fat has made its way into our every day food, I recommend Michael Moss’s book “Salt, sugar, fat – how the food giants hooked us”.
What should you really be looking at?
Only 37% of the above mentioned survey group look at the ingredient list. Sometimes it is written in so tiny letters and insanely long, that you really need to make sure to bring a magnifying glass plus extra time to the grocery store. Unfortunately, this is where you should spend most of your time. The ingredients are the only information that really matters. The first two or three are probably the most important. Ingredients are listed in order of predominance. The first ingredient listed contains the greatest amount.
I always like to have examples, it makes things easier to understand. So here are a few examples that will explain why it is so important to read the ingredient list:
Ingredients: crushed tomatoes, glucose fructose and/or sugar, modified corn starch, salt, canola oil, carrot powder, dehydrated onions, dehydrated garlic, spices, citric acid, onion powder, dehydrated parsley, soybean oil
2. Ingredients: sugar, modified cornstarch, sodium phosphates, natural flavour, cornstarch, hydrogenated soybean oil, mono- and diglycerides, colour
3. Ingredients: whole grain oats, wheat flour, sugar/glucose-fructose, whole wheat flour, vegetable oil, dextrose, vegetable oil shortening, milk ingredients, wheat bran, salt, cellulose, natural flavour, potassium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, wheat gluten, corn starch, carrageenan, guar gum
4. Ingredients: sugar, whole grain corn flour, wheat flour, whole grain oat flour, corn bran, maltodextrin, oat hull fibre, hydrogenated coconut and vegetable oil, salt, colour (fruit and vegetable juice concentrate, anthocyanin, annatto, turmeric), natural flavour
When I look at lists like that, I always have this image in my head where someone has a spice shaker of “colour”, “carrageenan” or “sodium phosphate” and adds them to their cooking. Gross, right? And the above lists are not even the longest and most difficult to understand lists. Point is, the easier to understand the ingredients listed in your food and the closer they are to real, whole food, the healthier they are.
I will expand on this in another post but, for now, here are ingredients that you do NOT want to see on the list. Start with those.
1. High fructose corn syrup
2. Natural and artificial flavours
3. Artificial colours
4. Vegetable oils (think canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil etc.)
5. BHT, BHA (preservatives)
6. Sugar and various names of sugar (names ending in -ose are a good indicator for another version of sugar)
7. Parabens (preservatives)
8. Sodium benzoate, sodium phosphates, sodium nitrates (preservatives)
9. MSG (Monosodium Glutamate)
10. Trans fats (if the list includes hydrogenated oil, it has trans fats, although it may say “trans fats free”)
Now, have a look at these products and their ingredients:
Ingredients: organic tomatoes
2. Ingredients: whole grain brown rice, whole grain quinoa, brown flax seeds, brown sesame seeds, water, sea salt, organic wheat free tamari
3. Ingredients: dark chocolate, sliced almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, coconut, organic cane sugar, brown rice syrup, coconut flour, organic chia seeds, sea salt
4. Ingredients: sweet potato, coconut, sunflower seeds, buckwheat, chia seeds, nutritional yeast, apple cider vinegar, Himalayan salt
These products have ingredients that we can actually pronounce and they make sense to us. Most of them are from whole foods. This is what we like to see.
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If you don’t look at anything else in this post, just look at my basic tips to navigate food labeling:
1. Look at the ingredient list first. Turn the box around and ignore the front of the package. If the ingredient list is too long or lists unpronounceable words, put it back on the shelf and look for a healthier option. (Hint: check out the natural food aisles in your conventional grocery store that many of them have now.)
2. Make it a habit to read the ingredients. Start today. Pick up a package from your pantry or the grocery shelf and read the ingredient list.
3. Focus on products that do not have more than 5-7 ingredients (based on Michael Pollan’s Food Rules).
4. Always opt for products without a label in the first place, aka fruits and vegetables, instead of browsing in the center aisles of the grocery store. Find inspiration for simple and quick meals with my meal plan service.
5. Look at the sugar content and be aware of ingredient splitting which often lists several different names of sugars as ingredients. Also, if the first three ingredients are all names of sugars, put it back.
6. Don’t use processed, packaged foods to base your daily vitamin and mineral intake on.
7. If there is an ad running on TV, it’s probably a good indicator to stay away from the product.
Although many of you may already be familiar with the above, I believe, that a lot of us – for many reasons – stopped paying attention to what’s in our food and choose to trust the companies that sell us “fast and convenient”. If it made its way onto our grocery store shelves, it must be ok to consume, right? Unfortunately, that’s far from the truth.
It is with these little changes on a daily basis that we can make a big difference in the long run and work on building our health, instead of building disease.
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If you want to chat more about healthy habits, please send me a message to hello@cabbageandbeets.com.
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What are some of the ingredients that you find on common products in your household but you have no idea what they are or why they are in your food? Tell me in the comments.
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