Weight loss and good nutrition is an ever-changing ocean whose waves and trends can be difficult to navigate. It wasn’t too long ago that low-carb diets were all the rage, but in August 2009, the Atkins Nutritionals company filed for bankruptcy in the US and pulled out of Britain. The South Beach Diet continues to be popular (on Amazon.com, five South Beach books rank amongst the top 25 diet books), advocating the “right” balance of carbs, fats, and lean meats. Meanwhile, the so-called “Mediterranean Diet” and the “French Paradox” are gaining ground as popular dieting philosophies.
While each diet teaches its own particular philosophy about how to balance one’s diet between proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and sugars, many people still lack the education they need to read and interpret the nutrition fact labels and the ingredient lists found on supermarket foods. People do tend to read these labels – an American poll in a few years back revealed that 80% of Americans read the nutrition labels. However, in that same poll, over half of those surveyed admitted they did not actually use the nutrition facts label to influence their purchasing decisions. This poll indicates that, perhaps due to the overwhelming number of different (and often contradictory) nutritional philosophies, people are no longer certain as to how to use nutrition data and ingredient lists to make good decisions about their diet.
Without engaging the competing dietary philosophies, however, there are still some common sense decisions consumers can make based on those nutrition labels and ingredient lists. Here’s a look at using nutrition labels and ingredient lists to make healthy eating choices for you and your family.
Check the Ingredient List First: Ingredients to Avoid
If nutrition labels are read 80% of the time, consumers probably read the ingredient lists far less, but this is often the more important information. Not all ingredients are created equally, and in this age of highly processed foods, we’ve grown so used to low-quality ingredients that we have come to accept eating them as somehow inevitable.
But there are definitely some ingredients that are commonly found in our foods that we should certainly avoid. These include, but are not limited to: corn syrup, food dyes, and certain preservatives.
Corn Syrup: Ah, corn syrup. We eat so much of it these days that we can barely remember a time when it wasn’t a part of our diet. From salad dressings and yogurts to soft drinks and fruit juices, virtually any processed food that contains sugar also contains corn syrup. Corn syrup isn’t healthy for us, but even worse is its cheaper to produce derivative: glucose-fructose. Glucose-fructose, also known as high fructose corn syrup by Americans and isoglucose by the British, is a mixture of corn syrups whose glucose has been transformed into fructose, then mixed with pure corn syrup (glucose). The result is a part glucose, part fructose syrup that is cheap and easy to produce.
There’s a laundry list of health problems that result from this ubiquitous food ingredient: obesity, diabetes (and insulin resistance), high blood pressure, and heart disease have all been associated with glucose-fructose in various scientific studies. More recent, conflicting data indicates that perhaps glucose-fructose isn’t as bad as previously thought, but many of these studies have been sponsored by the food and beverage industry, so the results of these studies are dubious at best. As a rule of thumb, avoid corn syrup as much as possible, and especially avoid glucose-fructose.
Food Dyes: Food dyes are in more places than you might think. Most processed or manufactured foods contain at least a few food dyes. Unfortunately, certain food dyes are associated with hyperactivity in children, migraine headaches, and possibly cancer. Once again, the manufactured food industry would have consumers believe that all of the dyes are perfectly safe, but a British study in 2007 demonstrated an undeniable link between between hyperactivity and food additives in children.
One of the dyes that the British study found harmful is quinoline yellow, a dye banned in the United States, Japan, and Australia, but still used in soft drinks, cosmetics, and medications in Canada. Other dyes to watch out for are tartrazine (also known as Yellow 5, banned in Norway and voluntarily phasing out in the UK), allura red (aka FD&C Red 40 and Food Red 17, banned in Denmark, Belgium, Germany, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, and Norway), and sunset yellow (aka FD&C yellow 6 and Orange Yellow S, banned in Norway and Finland).
Preservatives: Like food dyes, certain food additives and preservatives should also be avoided wherever possible. One of these is sodium benzoate, also called E211, a common preservative in salad dressings, jams, fruit juices, and condiments. When sodium benzoate is found together with ascorbic acid (a part of Vitamin C), it can form benzene, a known cancer-causing agent. Furthermore, one researcher out of Britain’s University of Sheffield posits that sodium benzoate, just by itself, can damage the DNA of human cells. DNA damage is associated with various neurological disorders, including Parkinson’s disease.
The press around sodium benzoate has gotten so bad and so convincing that even soft drink giant Coca-Cola decided to phase it out of the Diet Coke formula and its other soft drinks as well, including Sprite and Fanta. Other soft drink companies, such as Pepsi, still use sodium benzoate.
Another food additive to avoid is sodium nitrite, a preservative typically added to lunch meats and smoked fish to keep them from going bad. Many experts call sodium nitrite dangerous. For example, Dr. Christine Gerbstadt of the American Dietetic Association, says sodium nitrite is at “the top of my list of additives to cut from my diet.” Her reason? Under high temperatures, sodium nitrite chemically transforms into a compound known to cause cancer.
Scanning the list of ingredients first makes the nutrition label itself easier to understand. For example, knowing that a food serving has 20 grams of sugar means one thing if the food is a piece of fresh fruit, whose sugars are relatively easy for the body to digest. But it means another thing entirely if those 20 grams come from glucose-fructose, as already discussed. Therefore, read the fine print list of ingredients before reading the nutrition label; without understanding what’s in the food, it’s difficult to accurately interpret the nutrition facts.
Understanding the Nutrition Labels: Serving Sizes and Calories
To read and understand a nutrition label, start at the top with the serving size and servings per container.
One clever trick food manufacturers use is to base nutritional information on a small serving size, making the food seem more innocuous than it actually is. For example, many bottled drinks that most individuals will drink in one sitting over the course of an hour or two actually contain two to three servings. Thus, although the drink may only contain 150 calories per serving, little does the consumer realize that they are actually drinking 2.5 servings, or 375 calories. Likewise, certain snack foods show nutritional information based upon very small quantities, such as 5 or 10 pieces, when most adults are likely to eat two or three times that number in a single sitting.
And what exactly are calories, anyway? To be very specific and technical, one calorie is the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of water by one degree. More simply put, calories represent the energy we get from our food.
When we use as many calories as we consume, our weight remains the same. When we burn more calories than we consume, we lose weight. And when we burn fewer calories than we consume, we gain weight.
How Many Calories Should We Eat?
It’s not always the case that “more calories are bad” and “less calories are good”. It actually depends upon the individual, and that individual’s weight goals. Nutrition labels are based on an assumption that most people eat 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day. However, it is entirely likely that a petite female who works in an office-based job, for example, will not need a full 2,000 calories per day, but something more like 1,500 to 1,800.
One handy tool to discover your daily caloric needs is the Daily Needs Calculator on the site NutritionData.com. By entering a few simple facts about your weight and activity level, you can learn how many calories you need every day. The Daily Needs Calculator on NutritionData.com provides the number of required calories to maintain weight. If you need to lose weight, consider ways to make that calorie total smaller.
Calories from Fat and Types of Fat
Next to the listing of calories per serving is another number: “Calories from fat”. Eating fat doesn’t necessarily translate into being fat. In fact, the body requires a certain amount of fat per day for normal functioning – the brain, as one example, is mostly fat.
But not all fat is created equally, and there are some fats which are better for the body than others. Trans fats, for example, are processed fats which tend to raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of heart disease. Foods that contain trans fats are generally processed foods such as margarine and snack foods. Generally speaking, calories from trans fats should stay at 1% or less of total caloric intake. Trans fats are generally considered to be even worse for the human body than the highly maligned saturated fats.
Omega-6 and Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Known as “essential fatty acids” because they are necessary for normal body function, omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids are the “good fats” needed to support a healthy brain and nervous system. However, what most food manufacturers won’t say about these essential fatty acids is that most of us get plenty of omega-6 fatty acids but not enough omega-3 fatty acids.
The average western diet includes a 10:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids; scientists would prefer that we eat a ratio closer to 4:1 or even less. The current “overdose” of omega-6 fatty acids leads to a variety of problems – stroke, heart disease, and even depression can be related to an imbalance of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. To correct that ratio, eat more fish or consider taking a fish oil supplement. Cold-pressed flax seed oil contains omega-3s and provides a nice salad dressing alternative (and will help consumers avoid the aforementioned food preservatives and food dyes).
Getting Enough Nutrients?
Scanning further down the nutrition label is a section that isolates a few essential vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin C and iron. But ironically, the one type of food that most often comes with a nutrition label – fresh fruits and vegetables – are the foods most packed with essential nutrients. Some scientists typify the modern westerner as overfed, but undernourished. This undernourishment comes as a result of eating mostly processed foods, which are packed with calories and fats, but contain relatively few vitamins and minerals.
Conclusion: It’s Time to Reverse the Clock
What we can learn from nutrition labels and ingredient lists is that we have gotten too far away from the way we used to eat. All the latest research indicates that as a society we should get away from processed and manufactured foods and go back to eating food the old-fashioned way, before it was mass produced in factories. The best foods for us are fresh, natural foods that do not come pre-packaged in a box. No matter what claims the packaging on a “diet food” may make, for example, simpler meals of fresh fruits, vegetables, and unprocessed meats are far more likely to help us keep a reasonable weight and good health. When you know what to look for, a quick scan of ingredient lists and nutrition labels makes it easy to make healthy choices and evaluate diet trends while armed with common sense.
Related Posts & Links:
1. Understanding Omega-6 and Omega-3 Fatty Acids
2. NutritionData.com
3. Green Smoothie Drinks: My 14-Day Experiment
diet and eating, dietary supplements, tips for moms | ksinger, 1 Jan 10 | 
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