When it comes to proper dieting of food labels are extremely important. They pretty much tell you everything you need to know and give you a perfect overview of the nutritional value of the food at hand. Unfortunately, many people don't know how to read a nutrition label, which is something we will change now. This lesson is intended to make it easier for you to use nutrition labels to make quick informed food choices that contribute to a healthy diet. So the first thing you always want to check is actually not a nutrition label, but somewhere else on the packaging, which are the ingredients. Ideally, here you want to have as few as possible.
If you buy a head of lettuce for example, the only ingredient will be lettuce. The same goes for most other fruits and vegetables. being realistic though most people purchase packaged or frozen foods that have more than one ingredient. But then a similar rule applies the shorter the ingredient list the better. also understand that ingredient ordered by volume. The higher up on the list and ingredient is, the more of it you will find in the product.
So for example, if sugar, corn syrup or any other sweetener is the first thing on that brilliant list, then you probably want to avoid this product or at least limit your intake. Okay, now to the actual label. Here's a sample label from the FDA. Always start at the top and check the serving size. I always like to compare my foods on 100 gram basis, so one serving is more or less than 100 grams, you will have to do some calculating to adjust the values on the label. Next, you want to check the total calories.
While this will tell us how much energy the food contains. It doesn't say where the energy comes from. So then we go further down the label and check the three main macronutrients fat carbohydrates and protein. First fat. As you know, fat per se isn't bad, but it should come mostly from unsaturated fats, maybe some saturated fats Little to no trans fats. Therefore, a high transfer value is an indication to avoid this product.
The values for cholesterol and sodium should also be low in quality foods. You can check this by looking at the daily percentage on the right side of the label. Here anything below 5% is low, and anything over 20% is regarded as high onto carbs, like fats, carbs aren't bad, but you have to make sure that the carbs in your food don't just come from sugar. So if you see for example, that a food has 30 grams of carbs, and of those 30 grams 10 are from sure it's not a good sign. As a rule of thumb, the lower the sugar value, the better. The opposite holds true for dietary fiber, which you want to get quite a bit of.
The last macronutrient protein is actually pretty easy to get right. The higher the better, at least when it comes to diets focused on building muscle and losing weight. The very bottom The label will tell you the micronutrient value of the food. In general, the more vitamins and minerals the better. One exception is sodium Of course, but it's usually not found down below but higher up on the label and we already discussed this. And that's about it.
Reading a food label is actually pretty simple, and there isn't much you can do wrong once you know how to do it.