If you struggle with what you eat, or you are unsure what is even healthy, I highly recommend spending some time learning how to read nutritional labels. For many, just looking at the nutritional content of a given product before buying it can be enough to completely change one’s eating patterns. Today I want to break down what information we can derive from labels, and why 90% of the time, if it has a label, you shouldn’t be eating it.
Main Page Info
If we look at a standard nutritional label, there are a few main numbers that can tell us a lot about what we are about to consume. Below is a picture to help guide us through this process.
Let’s start at the top, as this is the most important information to have: serving size. The nutritional information on the label means nothing if we do not know the amount of the product we are referring to. For example, this label is for a midsized Gatorade bottle. You can see that the serving size is 8 fl oz (fluid ounces), but that there are 4 servings per container. Drink labels are most commonly misinterpreted because we think of a drink as something we have all at once. Most people would not think to buy a Gatorade but only ¼ of the bottle.
So serving size is first, followed by the number of servings in the container. Next we have the Calories (and on some labels, Calories from fat per serving). In my opinion, this is the least important information on the label. The nutrients that make up these calories will be MUCH more meaningful in regard to how your body responds to the product than total calories.
Next is the breakdown of the macronutrients. We start with fat, which is usually broken out in a variety of ways. On most labels, we will see the saturated fat content and the trans-fat content. On some other labels, you will also find the amount of monounsaturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, and even the amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 fats. The more info the better.
Below this is cholesterol, which, if you read the series on fat, is not nearly as important as once thought. Sodium will usually be provided as well and can be an important number to watch if you have high blood pressure. Processed foods and restaurant foods tend to contain an outrageous amount of salt, so be careful!
Next are the total carbs and another breakout, usually including fiber and sugars. This can be important as sugar is rarely beneficial to one’s health. Fiber on the other hand tends to be very beneficial. The higher the ratio of fiber to total carbs, the better. What you will discover, however, is that the foods that have the best ratios tend to not have any label at all, i.e. vegetables!
The last number we see is for total protein. Protein is essential for optimizing performance and health, so protein content will be important. As with carbs, however, the best place to find protein does not tend to have a label, i.e. fresh cuts of meat.
Once we get through the macronutrients, there is usually some indication of micronutrients (vitamins & minerals). This, unfortunately, tells us very little, as there are hundreds of different vitamins and minerals that are important to include in our diets. Even if we do care about the given vitamins and minerals, we are still only given the percentage of the recommended daily value based on a 2000 Calorie diet. This tells us nothing about the optimal value of such nutrient or the requirements for those individuals with caloric needs other than 2000 Calories.
With the information provided on a generic food label, we have some indication of the breakdown of the food and can form a vague opinion on whether this product will facilitate or hinder our goals. However, there is one more section on most nutritional labels that will tell us infinitely more about the quality of a food product than anything these numbers can: the ingredient list.
What is this Stuff?
The ingredients are listed in order of weight, so there is more of the first ingredient by weight than the last ingredient. When you start learning to read ingredient labels, it becomes harder and harder to find anything that has a label that you would want your body using as fuel. Let’s come back to our Gatorade example and see what else we can find out.
After our first look, we might already be thinking that Gatorade is not the best thing to be drinking just based on sugar content. As we see, if we drank the whole bottle (which is what most people do), we would be taking in 56 grams of sugar (daily recommendation is no more than 20 for women and 35 for men)! Now if you are an athlete who is looking to optimize performance, this may not worry you (especially if you plan to have it post exercise with some protein). So it’s not THAT bad, right?
Let’s break down the ingredients list and see what we find. First, we have water—good stuff. Second, sucrose syrup (pure sugar), but we could have expected that. Third, glucose-fructose syrup (aka high fructose corn syrup), and this is where things get dodgy. If you don’t already know that high fructose corn syrup is bad news bears, then we will have to save that for another day. Basically, fructose acts much differently in the body than glucose and can lead to rapid weight gain, making it very hard to lose unwanted fat. For the athlete, this is still not optimal because fructose is not as readily used for energy as glucose. Fructose must be first processed by the liver, which slows down the absorption and in excess will lead to issues with insulin sensitivity. Next we have citric acid, probably not terrible in small amounts, but this is one of the reasons many soft drinks and sport drinks can lead to tooth decay, with the acid leading the way in breaking down your enamel.
Now we come to the oh-so-transparent “natural flavors”. Here is the definition of natural flavoring from the Code of Federal Regulations:
"The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional."
This means that a given plant or animal product is broken down in a lab, and through a variety of techniques, is left tasting a desired way. Regardless of what you had hoped to eat, you may be ingesting the derivatives of yeast, bark, or animal by-products. This may or may not worry you, but the fact is that it is a toss-up when it comes to knowing what is in that food. The next three ingredients are different types of salt which we already know is in our Gatorade. What you might not know is that monopotassium phosphate has a duel role in life: as a food additive and as a fertilizer. I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but it is interesting to know. Last but not least, Red 40 and Blue 1. What the heck are those?! These happen to be just two of the many artificial food colorings that are used in foods. Red 40 is produced from coal, Blue 1 from plant oil. Both of these have been linked with hyperactivity in children.
There you have it. Who knew a simple drink could have so much going on. When we start to look at these things, we begin to see a picture of what we are actually consuming. Gatorade in the end is this: water mixed with a potentially helpful sugar (if you are participating in an athletic endeavor), a fat-producing sugar, a tooth-decaying acid, an unknown animal or plant derivative, salt, a fertilizer, and some hyperactive coal & oil.
Read the Label
What we start to find when reading labels is that we MUST look at the ingredients first, nutrients second. I always assume a product with a label is harmful unless proven wrong. Once label reading is a habit, let’s also recognize that food is not just something for our taste buds to enjoy. It is the fuel that that tells our bodies how to feel, look, think, and act. Every time we eat we have an opportunity to increase or decrease our potential. We can give our body what it needs to thrive, or we can leave it struggling to survive. We are not just reading labels for fun, we read them because every food item you chose to eat will have a direct and powerful influence on your life and health. Start by looking at labels and you will see that it is hard to find anything that you really want to use as fuel.
And it’s okay to put it back—your body will thank you.
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