Reading Food Labels Part 2
/The ingredients are usually listed below the Nutrition Facts on the side or bottom of the container. The ingredients are listed in the order of largest to smallest amount of ingredient included in the food. So if sugar is listed as the first ingredient you may want to consider something else unless you are looking at candy since sugar will be a large component of the product. I will pick on sugar since the US dietary recommendations specifically mention it. We are to consume less than 10% of our calories per day from ADDED sugar. So this is not from the sugar we get from fruits but from purely added sugar. That doesn’t seem that difficult, right?
If you are to take in 1,800 calories a day, you can take in 180 calories a day from added sugar, which is about 45 grams of sugar (4 calories in a gram of sugar). This seems like a lot of sugar but it really is not. If you make a cup of Nestle hot chocolate from the powder, you get 10 grams of sugar. That assumes you are making only 1 serving for yourself (2 tablespoons of powder). A snickers bar has 20 grams. Oatmeal Squares has 9 grams in a 1 cup serving. Quaker Oats, Honey and Almond Granola which sounds healthy has 200 calories and 10 grams of sugar in a ½ cup. That is a serving size but a ½ cup is probably not a typical portion for most people. A 12 oz. can of Coke has 39 grams of sugar.
Companies are sneaky when putting sugar in food these days. Most products do not list just sugar. That would make the sugar hunt easy. There are natural sources like honey, agave nectar, beet sugar, cane juice or sugar cane, barley malt extract and molasses to name a few. Then there are the more processed forms like maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, high maltose corn syrup, fructose, maltose, galactose, lactose. Pretty much anything that ends in an ‘-ose’ is sugar. So the third ingredient may be honey and you think that isn’t so bad, but then when you continue to look at the list other forms of sugar pop up. If you notice multiple forms of sugar in your product you might want to think twice about the item. Plus looking back up to the Nutritional Facts will give you an idea of how much sugar is really in the product. You would be surprised how many things have added sugar in them.
Then you have the artificial color and artificial flavors. These do not have to be broken down to be listed on the ingredient list since they are already known entities. If you looked them up, you would find long lists of chemicals which we regularly consider a normal part of our food. In 2007, artificial coloring and preservatives were studied and found to increase hyperactivity in children. At that time the European Food Standards Agency urged companies to voluntarily remove the artificial colors from food products. The US is a little behind on the times but several companies including Kraft, Campbell Soup, General Mills, Hershey and Nestle have promised to remove artificial coloring and flavoring over the next few years.
Michael Pollan has a great take on the ingredient list on foods. If the food contains ingredients that you cannot pronounce, you probably should skip over it. If the product has more than 5 ingredients, you may want to consider something else. He has many other great recommendations but these pertain specifically to the ingredients list.
If you have dietary restrictions, the ingredient list will help identify which foods you may be able to eat. As a vegan, you would not eat any product from an animal including milk products and eggs. Milk products show up as milk powder, milk protein, milk solids but also as lactose, casein, and whey. For those with gluten sensitivities the big 3 to look for are wheat, rye, or barley. They may take different forms like flour, pearls, flakes, proteins, etc…. Wheat by itself has multiple types including bulgur, durum, semolina, spelt (also known as farro and dinkel) and kamut. Malt, as in the flavoring, vinegar, syrup and extract have gluten. Seitan is used in some vegetarian products because it has a meat-like quality but it comes from wheat. The oats – oatmeal, oat bran, whole oats, and oat flour- do not contain gluten but must guarantee there has been no contamination from rye, wheat, and barley. There are other less common gluten containing foods so if you do have a gluten sensitivity check out https://celiac.org/live-gluten-free/glutenfreediet/sources-of-gluten/.
Some people also have allergies to certain ingredients like artificial colors, yeast, corn, and soy. I have known people who thought they were gluten sensitive and it ended up being an allergy to yeast. Over time corn and soy have slowly been incorporated in to more and more foods. Let’s review a label:
Ingredients:
Rice, wheat gluten, sugar, defatted wheat germ, contains 2% or less of salt, whey, malt flavor, calcium caseinate. Vitamins and Minerals: Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), reduced iron, niacinamide, vitamin B6 (pyridoxine hydrochloride), vitamin B1 (thiamin hydrochloride), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), folic acid, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin B12, vitamin D3.
Allergen Notes:
CONTAINS WHEAT AND MILK INGREDIENTS.
Special K is touted to be a healthy breakfast and even a replacement for other meals. The first ingredient is rice. It does not state it is whole grain rice so it cannot be assumed. This rice has been processed down to a point and this ingredient list does not tell where but it is not whole grain. When the first ingredient is a grain, oat, rice, or even corn being listed in its whole state is what you want to see. Whole wheat bread should have the first ingredient of whole grain wheat. Some do not. So this is not a great first ingredient. Sugar is the third ingredient with 2 parts of a wheat grain as the second and fourth ingredient but these are still parts of the grain. This is important because when whole wheat, oat, rice or whatever is split into parts you lose major nutrients. Many times the company tries to replace these by adding minerals and vitamins and sometimes they will even brag about being ‘fortified’ (we will discuss this in part 3). As you can see in the ingredient list multiple minerals and vitamins have been added to this cereal.
So to recap, Special K has 120 calories in a 1 cup serving where you will get NO fiber, 4 grams of sugar, 210 mg of sodium, and 6 grams of protein (which is fairly low). This is a low calorie item but with no real nutritional value by itself. And that’s without the milk.