How To Properly...
Read Nutrition Labels
How to properly Read Nutrition Labels
The government requires food manufacturers to put nutritional information of their labels, so you would expect the information to be easy to understand and use; but that isn’t always the case. You have to carefully read and compare labels of similar products and check all the units to make sure you are actually getting the correct information and not comparing applesauce to orange cheese. Be sure to check the front of the package for how many ounces, liters or gallons are inside; remembering that you can convert from one unit to another as long as you know the conversion factors-about 4 liters per gallon, a fluid ounce is close to 30 mls. (1000mls. per liter) and 128 fluid ounces to a gallon. Your cookbook should have all the exchanges inside the front or back covers.
Pay attention to the size of the “serving” for which the calories, fat and nutrition are listed. Note how many servings per package are said to be there and ask yourself if you are likely to eat 2/3 of a small bag of chips as opposed to polishing off the entire package. No value judgment is intended; the number of actual standard size cups of coffee produced by a “12 cup” pot is more like 5 or 6; it’s just that everyone isn’t using the same size cup. Just use your knowledge of yourself and your family to be realistic about how many servings you will actually get from the package and revise the government’s figures accordingly. For instance if a bag of cookies says a serving is six cookies and there are 8 servings per package with 450 calories per serving-that means the entire package holds 3600 calories and each cookie is about 60 calories.
Look at the percentage of daily requirement of each nutrient in the food. Remember you aren’t choosing a can of hash based on its ability to fulfill your daily allowance of Vitamin C, but make sure it isn’t exceeding your day’s allowance of fat in one plateful. Realize that you should be eating a variety of foods to get all the nutrition you need and that calories consumed with little or no nutrition either displace nutritious food or cause you to increase your consuming of food, resulting in weight gain. Most foods should contain a reasonable percentage of the some of the day’s nutrients; you eat a variety to get everything your body needs.
Be aware that different manufacturers will use different size servings and packages in an attempt to fool you into thinking their product is the best, has the fewest calories or fat or is cheaper to purchase. Just do the math; carry a calculator with you to the store. Compare calories, fat and vitamins per cracker or cookie by dividing the number of calories, etc. per serving by the number of cookies in a serving. Do the same for any food. You may have to calculate the total nutrition per package and change the units because some companies will use pound while others use fluid ounces. Just remember that if the packages are the same size, such as a gallon of vegetable oil, then they both contain the same number of fluid ounces and pound of oil.
This is a very good opportunity to teach your children the value of basic math skills, as well as fundamentals of nutrition.
