How to properly read a nutrition label
READING the nutrition label on your favourite snack before gobbling it down could be a little tricky, but you may want to take time out to understand how this should be done because your health depends on it, says general and anti-ageing practitioner Dr Sandra Knight.
“Knowing what we put in our bodies is just as important as ensuring that we get the correct medications when we fill a doctor’s prescription. After all, foods can heal. This is where the indispensable food labels come in,” Dr Knight said.
Dr Knight said that generally food labels give the nutritional value, usually per serving, of the food, but she cautioned consumers to check what is considered a portion size as this may differ across companies and food items.
“You may see one snack that contains 90 calories per serving, and another that contains 140 calories per serving, and discard it — when the truth is it’s the latter that has [fewer] calories. The first serving size is one ounce and the second is 2.5 ounces. Do the math,” Dr Knight advised.
She said that labels also serve an important purpose of informing those with varying health conditions about product make-up as well as providing information that could help consumers to check against claims made by companies.
“Apart from counting calories, labels tell us of important mineral contents that may affect us if we are diabetics, hypertensives, etc. The best food for the hypertensive, for example, should have a small percentage of sodium and some potassium. Therefore, it is important to follow the line across and to see how much of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of that mineral that product will provide,” she said.
“In other cases, such as when food ads claim that they are fibre-based, look for six per cent or more RDA, make sure that carbohydrates (sugar) is not the highest content, and the icing on the proverbial cake would be if there is some amount of vitamins for fortification added,” Dr Knight said.
Dr Knight said often forming a part of the nutrition label is the product ingredients, which should be equally scrutinised before purchasing products.
“Closely examining ingredients is just as important as labels. For example, if you look closely you would realise that juice is rarely that, and the ingredients usually show high fructose syrup and concentrate content. Similarly, beverages labelled fruit-flavoured are just that, and the ingredients usually reflect that what you are consuming is just an artificial powdered flavour. This, in my personal experience, is particularly popular with products labelled ‘apple juice’,” Dr Knight explained.
Dr Knight said that there are also other general food shopping practices that she hopes you will consider for a healthier you when you go shopping again.
• Choose refreshments that say ‘juice’ and not ‘drink’ if you hope to get valuable nutrients as opposed to high levels of processed sugars.
• A trick to note is that if sugar is one of the first three ingredients, don’t buy it. Manufacturers place ingredients in order of the proportion that the food has, larger to smaller. Remember, high-content sugary foods are not healthy at all.
• Choose foods that have as few ingredients as possible and do not contain ingredients that give you a twisted tongue when you try to say their names.
• Simple foods with as few preservatives as possible are best. Therefore, supporting your Jamaica brands could be more than just buying Jamaican. We don’t live far away from the manufacturer, so the preservatives are less.
• For people with allergies, be sure to always check your labels, not only to see if the product has a bothersome ingredient, but to make sure that it was not manufactured in an area where the product to which you are allergic was.
