Tips on reading food labels
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We’re constantly told to “eat healthy,” but with so much information out there, it can be hard to know what to pay attention to. Minimizing the amount of packaged foods you eat is a good place to start, but when you do buy packaged foods, there are important things to look for on the back of the box.
Registered dietitian, Kate Park, says the most important part of a nutritional label is the serving size. Fat and calories are calculated based on a specific portion, and that may not match up with what you’re eating. “Say you had a sandwich with two slices of bread and their numbers were based on one slice, you’d have to double everything to make sure you know exactly what you’re getting.”
For a rough idea of how much fat, sodium and fibre you’re consuming, check out the “percent daily value” column that’s calculated based on a 2000 calorie diet.
“It’s a good way to tell if something is high in something or low in something. So if something has 5 per cent daily value or less, it’s usually low…and if it’s 10 or 15 per cent it’s usually high.”
Look for high percentages of fibre, and low percentages of trans fat and sugar.
The World Health Organization says we should reduce our added sugar intake to 12 teaspoons a day, but added sugar isn’t just what you put in your coffee – there are lots of hidden sources. Honey used to sweeten cereal counts- so do sugars used to sweeten sauces and yogurts. “One of the ways you can start to get an idea of how much added sugar there is in a product is looking at the ingredients list. If you notice the words sugar or different types of sugar in the first couple of ingredients, that would tell you that most of the sugar that’s in that product is actually probably from added sugars.”
Ingredients are ordered by how much is contained in the product, so look for whole foods at the front of the list. A lot of products have special stamps of approval saying they’re “whole grain” or “heart healthy”. These are good starting points, but not all of these symbols are regulated so read the information on the back of the package too.
