#readinglabels

Hi all,

Todays blog is about nutrition labels and how to interpret them correctly. The macronutrient and micronutrient make up of our food is just as or even less important as the ingredients that go in. WE can get carbs, fats and proteins from MANY sources, and it is therefore crucial to understand where our food comes from in order to appreciate what it does to our health. 

A few tips on reading nutritional labels: These can be very confusing and often companies can try and trick us, especially when it comes to the 'per serve' quantities. a common mistake is that people perceive one serve as whatever they want it to be. For instance, someone drinking a chocolate milk might read that per serve there is 10g of sugar (just an example not sure exactly how much). This will lead them to believe that the whole 500ml carton of chocolate milk only has 10g of sugar, what a win! However, what they havent done is gone deeper and sought out how much 'one serve' on the carton is. It could be 100ml, and therefore the whole 500ml carton has 50g of sugar! This is a very common mistake and one must ensure that they understand how much one serving really equates to, and how much of the product they are consuming. This also applies to understanding how much protein, fats, carbs and other nutrients there are in a particular product.

Another concern that can be raised in this respect is the source of the nutrients. When reading a nutritional label it is important to consider the ingredients (which are listed in descending order - from most prominent to least prominent). More often than not people can pick up a product, read that there is pretty much zero quantity of any macro or micro nutrient, which leads them to believe "how bad can this be for me?". It often requires taking that extra step to see what has gone into the product. A good example is diet coke/coke zero. As can be seen below, coke zero has literally no nutritional value. Now if you look at the ingredients, they dont look too natural. Now its not to promote consumption in a way that is 100% natural, but consuming these kinds of substances is extremely harmful to our health. Artificial colours, sweeteners and flavours have deleterious effects on our health. Often these artificial ingredients are hidden by numbers, such as 'colour E102' and the like. Whenever you are in doubt, simply type in the name/number (like the latter) into google, and numerous responses will come back with the actual name of the ingredient, its effect on health, uses, sourcing and so on. You are only limited by how willing you are to learn. 

That is why i will leave you to search the ingredients below, and understand what sort of effect they are having on your overall health.

I hope this blog was helpful in assisting you to read labels effectively, and again, if you have any questions or comments please dont hesitate.

Yours in health,