According to a survey by the Food Marketing Institute, almost 60% of food shoppers are trying to buy healthier foods.  Most of them said they were trying to buy foods that would help them lose weight.   And the food industry is always trying to help us…with their bottom line (not our bottoms!) in mind of course.  Remember the flurry of low-fat foods that flooded the market a few years ago?  Some experts believe that these low-fat foods helped us gain, not lose weight.  We were lulled into thinking if it was “low fat” it must be good.  So we ate more.  Another example is the push to “carbo-load” before strenuous exercise that was popular about a decade ago.  I trained for and ran the NY Marathon about 10 years ago and didn’t lose a pound.  I took carbo-loading seriously.

With processed food packaging proclaiming “no cholesterol,” “healthy alternative,” “heart healthy,” “no sugar, no fat” and on and on…what’s a consumer to do?  I suggest two major strategies:

• One is to buy and eat locally grown, fresh, whole foods (e.g, fruits and vegetables) whenever possible.  Seek out healthy protein sources, such as poultry and fish, and keep less healthy choices – marbled red meat, for example – to a minimum. 
• Another strategy is to become a food label shopper.  Learn to read and use food labels to help you cut through the marketing hype and get to the truth about what packaged foods contain.   Be sure you read the whole label as well as the list of ingredients, paying particular attention to serving size.  Note how the listed serving size compares to what you actually eat.  If the serving size is 1/2 package, but you routinely eat the whole thing, you have to double the values listed in the food label..  Although serving size is supposed to be standardized, there is one notable exception:  packaged breakfast cereals.  They may have very different serving sizes.  To determine the nutritional values for packaged cereals, you may find it easiest if you multiply all of the ingredients to get to a serving size of 1 cup.  Then you can compare across products.  

Here’s an example from my pantry:

Cereal (without milk)	Serving size	Calories/serv. & cal/1 cup	Sodium/serv. & per 1 cup	Carbs/serv. & carbs/1 cup	Sugars/serv. & per 1 cup	Fat/serv. & per 1 cup	Fiber/serv. & per  1 cup	4 main ingredients		Hi fructose corn syrup?
Cheerios	1 cup	110 (serving) 110 (cup)	210 mg 210 mg	22 g 22 g	1g 1 g	2 g 2 g	3 g 3 g		Whole grain oats, modified corn starch, corn starch, sugar	No
Kellogg’s All Bran ‘Bran Buds’	1/3 cup	70 (serving) 210 (cup)	200 mg 600 mg	24 g 72 g	8 g 24 g	1 g 3 g	13 g 39 g	Wheat bran, sugar, psyllium seed husk, oat fiber		Yes
Safeway Old-Fashioned Oats	½ cup  (dry)	150 (serving) 300 (cup)	0 0	27 g 54 g	0 0	2.5 g 5 g	4 g 8 g	100 % rolled oats		No

So, based on this information, what’s a good choice?  Cheerios are low cal (unless you top them with whole milk, lots of sugar, and go heavy on high calorie fruit) and low in simple sugars.  If you want fiber, go with the Bran Buds.  You will get you entire day’s recommended amount of fiber if you can eat a cup.  But it is relatively high in calories, high in sodium, high in total carbohydrates and high in simple sugars.   It contains high fructose corn syrup.  Old-fashioned oats is a whole food with no added ingredients.  If you can limit yourself to ½ cup of dry cereal (this will cook up to a larger amount) and not add butter or milk with fat, this is a pretty healthy choice.  Note:  instant oat meal has different nutritional values from old-fashioned oatmeal.  For example, Quaker Instant Oatmeal and Brown sugar, lists a serving size as 1 packet (43 g), has 160 calories with 20 of those calories from fat.  I usually need to eat 2 packets to feel full.  There is 270 mg of sodium, 3 g of dietary fiber and 13 g of sugar per packet.

If you are not losing weight but think you are eating healthy, it may be time to become a food nutrition label fanatic.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a great website that takes you through the basics of mastering food labels.  It points out that you need to start with serving size, as we just discussed.  Then you check the calories, look at nutrients you should limit (such as fat, cholesterol, sodium and carbohydrates), and check the amount of nutrients you want to get enough of, such as vitamins and minerals.  The website explains that the footnote, at the bottom (in smaller print) lists the recommended daily values of key nutrients (fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, and fiber) for a 2,000 calorie diet and a 2,500 calorie diet.  These values are the same on all food labels.  This information is useful when combined with the % daily value of each nutrient specific to that foodstuff that listed in the table.  For example, if a food label states the product has 12 g of fat and that is equal to 18% of the recommended daily value, you know that eating one serving of that food will give you about 1/5 (18%) of the total amount of fat recommended for that day.  Here is how it is calculated.  The product contains 12 g.  The maximum recommended daily value of fat is 65 g.  12/65 = 18%.

The site does not include a discussion of looking at the list of ingredients.  But this is important too.  Processed foods must list ingredients in order of its contribution to the product.  If you see sugar or high fructose corn syrup listed as the first or second ingredient, you know the product is loaded with the sweet stuff. 

Finally, you can test you knowledge by taking a web-based quiz that uses real life examples.  It helps to illustrate the pitfalls of less than careful label reading.

Happy Shopping!

Updated 5/29/06

by: Pat, Friday, May 26, 2006 7:21 PM
Filed Under: Weight loss behaviors, Benefits or hazards of certain foods, Public health, Tools, Dietary Fat, Food labels, Overweight/obesity, High fructose corn syrup, Food policy, Calorie counting, Portion control, Eat local, Protein, Carbohydrates, Serving size, Weight loss