Navigating Food Labels: Don't be tricked!
Food labels are there to protect us and provide transparancy and accountability, right? Then why are they so confusing?! Let’s look at a few things to be wary of when trying to pick what’s right for you. We’ll talk nutrition facts and cover some claims like “Grass Fed” and “Free Range” and the Big O…..Organic.
Check the video or scroll below for the summary!
(Scroll to the very bottom for a Funny P.S. Video about how I got tricked by a label one day after posting how not to get tricked. oh yeah.)
1:10 Most to Least
Ingredients are required to be listed most to least, so you can use this info to your advantage. If a granola in the breakfast ailse appeals to you, but the first ingredient is sugar and the second is brown sugar, you have a good clue that you don’t want to put that in your body. On the other hand if you scroll the ingredients list on that granola and sugar is the last ingredient, you know it is a smaller percentage of the overall food and might decide that is acceptable. It’s sometimes faster to scan that way than to calculate off the nutrient label.
3:47 Daily calories and RDA
Labels are calculated off a 2,000 calorie diet. This might work for you but if you are trying to bulk up or training for an event you could be consuming many more than that whereas if you are trying to lose weight, you could very well be much lower than that. This will tank the accuracy of the percentages on the label, so be aware of how that affects you.
The RDA—Recommended Daily Allowance—these numbers look impressive right? This product claims to have 20% of my iron and this one 100% of my vitamin C! Know these recommendations are not an exact science and are estimated to meet the bare requirements to keep you from getting sick. Meaning, for example, just enough vitamin C that you won’t get scurvy. So when aiming for nutrients, look at this as a bare minimum and try to raise the bar! Aim higher when regarding minerals and vitamins!
(Not in Video:) Good vs High
If the box claims to be a Good Source of Calcium, that means the product provides 10-19% of your RDA of calcium. If it said High in Folate! That means it contains more than 20% of your RDA of folic acid.
4:40 Calorie Counts
Most people look at this number and not often much else. Many of us can almost calculate calories in our head, we’ve been counting them so long. Ideally you don’t have to watch calories. In a healthy, whole foods diet you eat until satiated and forget the digits. But in the meantime, it’s good to be aware of what these mean.
Low calorie means less than 40 calories per serving. That’s why servings in a package can be ridiculously small, the manufactures want this coveted Low Calorie claim on their box.
Calorie Free means it has less than 5 calories per serving. Crazy, right? Still has calories!
5:40 Fat Free and Sugar Free
My first reaction is “gross.” If they took the fat and sugar out of this food, what did they add back in to take it's place? Food for though. But as a society we have been trained to look for these labels. We will do a discussion soon about healthy fats and why we should be searching for those on the label, not the words “Fat Free.”
Zero Trans Fats, please
The fats we should avoid at all cost are Trans Fats. They are required to be listed on the label, however, if there is less than 1/2 a gram of trans fat per serving (again! Serving tricks!) then it does not need to be listed! What? Trans fats are an inflammation bomb ready to riddle your body with oxidative damage and wreak havoc on your metabolism. But they can be in your food and not labelled?! Look for words like hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated as tell tale sign that these fats are hiding in your food. Also, hydrogenated fats occur naturally and are not labelled when in certain emulsifying additives like mono- and diglycerides. Another reason to be wary of additives (ingredients that don’t occur in a whole food state!)
7:29 Sugars and Added Sugars
As of 2018 added sugars—sugar not naturally occuring in that food—are required to be listed separately on the label. This is helpful to distinguish between natural sugars and others and is particularly helpful if you are watching your carbohydrate count.
8:50 100 Names for Sugar
Sugar comes in so many forms that you might see it listed multiple times on one label. This is confusing when you just want to know how much sugar you’re dealing with. Look for these clues:
Sugar: This is easy and forthright, but some people are still confused by healthy sounding “sugars.”
Examples are: Sugar, Brown Sugar, Turbinado Sugar, coconut sugar, palm sugar, date sugar,
-OSE: This is a hint that you are looking at sugars and is common suffix in sugar substances.
Examples: Lactose (milk sugar) Dextrose (usually from corn) Sucrose, Maltose, Fructose, Galactose, etc.
Syrup: This word can make a sugar sound more virtuous, but it is till sugar.
Brown rice syrup, malt syrup, evaporated cane or fruit syrup, and others. Let’s not forget Corn Syrup or it’s nefarious cousin, High Fructose Corn Syrup. This is sugar on steroids!
Others: look for other sweeteners that are healthy in and of themselves, but context can change everything.
Examples: Honey (is it raw and local or processed?) Fruit Juice Concentrate, etc.
10:20 Food Additives
There isn’t time to cover them all here but a good rule of thumb is:
If you don’t know what it is, don’t put it in your body
Look it up, ask, or avoid altogether!
10:35 MSG: a case study
Let’s look at one as an example of how confusing additives can be to navigate. MSG—or monosodium glutamate—is an excitotoxin that works to make food addictive and exciting. Glutamic Acid naturally occurs in many foods, and has a healthy role in our bodies, but when it occurs in additives, it is more than we were meant to handle. The food industry loves MSG because it hits the pleasure centers in the brain so a food that tastes good tastes REALLY GOOD and you are much more likely to go back for more. Many people are finding they have sensitivities to MSG, that it causes headaches, irritates mood conditions, or racing heart, flushing, or causes stomach trouble. Manufacturers know people are looking for MSG on the label so they can avoid it. So what do they do? Certainly, they could opt not to use it. Instead, they label it under different names,
Other names for MSG:
Glutamic Acid, Hydrolized Protein, Autolyzed Yeast, MS Salt, L-glutamate, L-Glutamic Acid, etc
Other Additives:
Many food additives are accused of having links to cancer. Many will have conflicting articles supporting and refuting these claims. In most cases, there simply isn’t enough research to know definitively, but it makes the case for eating simple, familiar ingredients in whole food forms.
Some ingredients to watch for: BHT, Carrageenan, Sodium Nitrite, Bromides
Do you feel a little less protected by your food label now? Just because it is “Generally Recognized as Safe” and legally allowed in our food does not make it healthy for us to consume!
12:50 Food Demo
At this point in the video I demonstrate how I read labels by showing a couple products I picked up recently.
16:00 Whole Food Claims
Foods with 1 ingredient don’t need ingredient labels, but they still make a lot of claims that we might need help deciphering!
16:20 Eggs
What exactly went into those eggs? How were they raised? How were the chickens treated? Which are the best?
17.28 Organic
The Organic label simply means:
No chemical fertilizers
No sewage sludge
No Irradiation
No GMOs
So that speaks highly for what is NOT allowed in our food. But it doedn’t indicate much about the health and care of the chickens that laid the eggs.
Vegetarian Fed
Chickens are not vegetarians. They hunt and peck all the grubs and bugs they can find and any field mouse they might come across. But Vegetarian fed, in commercial settings, can still be a positive indicator because it means they weren’t fed chicken or animal byproducts. That is right, chickens are often fed ground up bits of other chickens to reduce waste and cheapen food. Gross! But vegetarian fed does not tell us anything else about the quality of their food or how the chickens lived.
Cage Free
This one conjures up warm fuzzy images of chickens running free. Not necessarily or even probably not. You can still have thousands of chickens stuffed in a hen house, but instead of cages, they are in an open space tripping all over each other. Cage free does not indicate that they any more space. In fact, they often have just enough room to stand up but not spread their wings or move about easily.
Free Range
Doesn’t mean much. It technically means the chickens have access to the outdoors, but in reality, it can mean a 5 foot porch attached to the hen house that they may or may not be able to get to. It is sad how producers can technically adhere to a label, but totally miss the spirit of it.
Pasture Raised
The chickens have access to grass, but may not actually be on it often.
Natural
A buzz word that means absolutely nothing by industry standards. I have used this in my own marketing! But it is unregulated and used on many products far from natural. In eggs, it really could mean anything.
Hormone Free
Well, all animal products have hormones in them naturally. A more accurate claim would be “No Hormones Added.” On the bright side, it has been illegal to add hormones to egg layer feed since the 50s, so a carton that says anything about hormones is just trying to catch your eye.
Omega 3
These days, many eggs are labelled Omega 3 enriched and cost a little extra. This means the chickens were fed a diet enriched with either flax seed or canola oil to boost the Omega 3 fatty acids in the egg itself. So if you are trying to avoid GMOs, the canola might be a red flag for you. In general, it would be better to buy eggs that were raised in a healthy way than an egg from an over crowded birdhouse.
21:30 Meat
Many of the labels described above apply to meat also. Be aware of which refer only to food and which refer to how the animal was raised.
Grass Fed
Were the cows really grass fed out on pasture their entire lives? Maybe, maybe not. A cow could spend the majority of his life on grass, but the last months in a feedlot being fattened up on grains and other questionable feed and still be labelled grass fed.
Look for
100% Grass Fed
Grass FInished
Pasture Raised
Again, like with chickens, this doesn’t mean they live on open pasture. To use this label on any meat animal, it means it was on pasture for at least 120 days of the year (only 1/3 of the time?) and it doesn’t indicate if that pasture was open rolling fields of lush green grasses or something more like a parking lot.
12:20 Wild Caught
Even a claim like “wild caught” can trip you up! I have seen salmon that said Wild Caught in big letters but it turns out, that was part of the brand or product name. In small letters on the back somewhere it said “Farm raised Atlantic salmon.” That is outright misleading! All Atlantic salmon is farm raised. Farm raised can be done in a healthy way, but is more than likely not so be follow through with a company before you make assumptions.
22:35 What’s the Best Way to Know?
Not in Video: Look for 3rd Party Certified
3rd Party Certifications are the only way to ensure a label means what you think it means. An example would be “Certified Humane.” With any of these labels, you can look up the certification to see exactly what it means for the product you are buying. It helps you shop with confidence
THE BEST WAY TO KNOW IS TO KNOW YOUR FARMER
Go right to the source. Know who raised your food and how. Raise it yourself if you can, and if you can’t, know your farmer! Ask all the questions you want about how it was raised, what it was fed, etc. A farmer should have nothing to hide and be proud to answer all your inquiries.
In the end, you can’t rely on labeling to tell you what you’re eating. You need to be diligent and look out for yourself and your family.
Come Visit the Farm!
Are you local? Come and meet your farmer, see how your food is raised. Chat with us. Ask questions. We love it!
Need More Help?
Let me help you. I can help you learn to navigate the food jungle and make the food choices that are right for you and your family. Schedule a free consultation to see how I can help you.
P.S. Bonus Video
A quick, true confession about how I got tricked one day after posting how not to get tricked! So honest, so real, you even caught me in my jammies!