Make A Habit of Reading Food Labels

While shopping you might have seen that many people randomly add the products to the cart while few check the strip on the backside of the product and then they either add it to the cart or keep it back on the shelf. What could they be checking? Is it ingredients or nutritional facts label? Well, you can check both to keep yourself healthy by eating healthy.

We know that many prefer checking ingredients before purchasing any product so that they don’t eat something they shouldn’t but checking nutritional facts is also recommended. It was found that those who check this label eat less number of calories than those who don’t. Try it yourself and you’ll see that you will consume less calories, less cholesterol, less fat and more protein and fiber. This is found from a study published in “journal of the American Dietetic Association” in August, 2010. You just need to get used to this label which will become easy once you understand it well.

Make A Habit of Reading Food Labels

Try To Reduce The Calories and Harmful Ingredients

You can find the nutrient values per serving on the label. If you eat more than a serving, then you need to multiply these numbers accordingly. If you think that the numbers are going high, then find a product that have lesser values per serving. This way you can eat more yet take lesser number of calories. Also check if any harmful ingredient is present in it so that you can eat it.

Take More Beneficial Nutrients

You must be aware of what beneficial nutrients are. Calcium, iron, potassium, vitamins A and D, fiber, etc. are those nutrients avoided mostly by Americans. The food they eat does not contain these nutrients in sufficient amounts and thereby gives deficiencies. The food item that consists of 5% or less of the daily value of a particular nutrient is considered to be poor source of that nutrient while the food that consists of 20% or more of the daily value of a particular nutrient is considered to rich source of that nutrient.

How To Compare Foods and Choose The Right One?

You need to choose products of similar type in order to compare and choose the healthier one. Choosing the beneficial nutrients and less healthy nutrients can be done with the help of ingredient list. Do not get tempted by a long ingredient list; avoid those with multiple types of sugars mentioned on the top of the ingredient list. When choosing a cereal product, choose the one that contains whole grains on the top of the ingredient list and avoid the one that contains refined grains. Choose the products that contain fewer but familiar ingredients over those that contain more but unfamiliar ingredients. These unfamiliar ingredients which are difficult to even pronounce are mostly additives.

The Serving Sizes

These food labels make you familiar with the standard serving size and will help you control the portion size. Take a product at a time and measure one serving of it so that you can understand what it looks like. Portioning the food in your plate will further help you control it; so, you won’t eat more or less than what you require. However, the portion can be more or less based on the food item and its nutrient value. When you are eating vegetables then you can eat a big portion of it since these are rich sources of nutrients and are non-starchy but when you are eating fat foods then you need to reduce the portion size as a small portion of it can give you many calories and give weight to your body.

Thus, it is important for everyone irrespective of just weight goals, so you should check both ingredient list and nutritional facts labels before purchasing the product.