Labeled for Health: Making Sense of the Nutritional Info on your Groceries

By David A. Johnson MD, Medical Director, Signature Care

Friday, March 2nd, 2007; Posted: 9:00 a.m.

We are all being bombarded with advice on eating well, exercising, and taking better care of ourselves. Where do we begin? Eating better, for most people, involves being more selective at the grocery store. Certainly, we need to be smart when we eat out - in fact, the less we eat out, the better off we will be.

Making healthy decisions at the supermarket is a big step toward improving our nutrition and overall health. Thanks to improvements in food labels, we can make more informed decisions about what we eat by looking at the packaging information. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand food labels, but you do have to pay attention or you could be misled. Below are tips on how to make the best use of label information.

When looking at nutrition facts, the two pieces of information shown first are the serving size and servings per container. Those are very important because the nutrition numbers can look deceptively good if you make incorrect assumptions. For example, if the total fat grams listed are13, that may not sound horrible. If you fail to notice there are four servings per container, however, you will miss the fact that you're getting a whole day's worth of fat in one container. Some unscrupulous manufacturers have tried to make their nutrition information look better by stating that a small can of something serves four people. The government is looking at changing regulations but in the interim, be sure to check the intended servings per container.

Secondly, when looking at the percentages of daily values, keep in mind this is based on a 2,000-calorie daily diet. For the 2/3 of Americans who are overweight, a 2,000-calorie diet will usually be more calories than needed. Talk to your doctor or dietitian about how many calories per day are right for you. For most of us, 2,000 calories per day is too many. Based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, for example, you should be consuming about 65 grams of fat per day. But for most folks, keeping our fat grams to 50 or less per day would be much healthier.

Let me conclude with a few tips to help you as you look at food labels. Your doctor or dietician can help you determine your ideal food intake, but here are a few general hints for the majority of us.

1. Shoot for 50 grams of fat or less per day. Try to keep the saturated fats portion as low as possible- 1/3 of total fat or less.
2. Try to avoid trans fats altogether (that are now listed on labels and are nothing but bad). At most, try not to get more than 1 gram per day.
3. Keep sodium at 2,000 milligrams (2 grams) per day. Sounds like a lot, but in fact that is about one teaspoon!
4. When looking at sugar content, keep in mind that one teaspoon of sugar is about 4 grams.
5. Try to get at least 30 grams of fiber per day. (As Americans we only get about 10 grams on average).
6. If trying to lower your cholesterol, focus on cutting down on total dietary fat-not just dietary cholesterol. Limiting cholesterol is not nearly as effective as limiting fat for reducing your cholesterol level.
7. Remember that all those percentages listed on a label are based on a 2,000–calorie per day diet. If you're trying to reduce your calories and eat less than that amount, don't use those percentages as guidelines. Use the actual numbers such as fat grams and milligrams of sodium, etc.

This may seem overwhelming and confusing, but don't get discouraged. The more time you spend looking at food labels, the better you will understand. Ask your doctor any questions you may have, but take advantage of this tool to take charge of your diet. If you eat out frequently, there are guidebooks with nutrition information for restaurant and fast food. Knowledge is power, and in this case, it can be the power to change our life in a healthy way! Here's to your health.