How To Read The Label On Your Food
Reading The Label For Calorie Counting
There are actually several things you should be looking at when reading a Nutritional label. Here we are going to focus on just a few parts of it.
For the more popular diets out there there are four key aspects of the label that you should focus on. These are calories, carbs, fiber and the sometimes overlooked serving size. Mainly Carbs are going to be more for Carb diets. These diets usually focus on limiting carbs to set levels per day. You can read more about different diets on a post where we cover several popular diets, Just click below for a link to there.
(Click Here to read Calorie counting vs other Diets)
Serving size
First we are going to cover serving size. Understanding what a serving size is and how to measure it can effect all the other parts of the label. Usually depending on the size of the container, you will find different ways serving size is stated. For most personal size items you will find one set of numbers. But for some packages that can be divided, you will many times find it says “Per Serving”. Then it will state the number of servings in that container. This means that the nutritional information like calories, carbs, etc should all be multiplied by the number of servings to get the information for the entire container.
Calories
Here we can use a family size bag of chips as an example.
You will find it usually reads a calorie count such as 150 calories. Understand that this is the calories in a given serving and not the bag. These bags will usually have a total of 10 servings. This means that the 150 calories is just one tenth of the bag. So if you eat half the bag you should count 750 calories. There are a few ways you can measure the amount you eat.
First
First you can weigh the bag before and after you eat something and just write down the amount you eat. The bag will usually state a weight of 28g is one serving, if you would like to weight individual servings out. I would recommend doing this for at least a few weeks. This way you start to learn what a serving looks like. The link below is of a scale that we find really helpful, also it comes in different colors and is really easy to use.
Second
Even though the first way is the most accurate. There are a few other ways to measure this. If you are the only one that eats out of that bag you can simply take the amount of days it take you to finish that bag and average the calories for those days. So if it takes 4 days to finish the entire bag you can take the total 1,500 calories for one bag and divide it by 4 to get 375 calories you ate on average. Even though this may not be completely accurate you can at least account for the total calories you are eating. This also works for things like coffee creamers. Using this method isn’t precise but you at least count the total calories you are eating.
Third
This is by far from the least accurate, but you can sort of guess the amount of the bag you ate. I recommend that you measure the amount you eat a few times. Understand what a single serving of solid and liquid foods look like. You will notice that just measuring the amount you eat, a few times. You will become much better at estimating the amount every time.
Is Fiber a Carb?
First we will cover what a carb really is.
A Carb is one of three macronutrients, with the other two being protein and fat. The body breaks carbs down into glucose which then basically feeds everything in your body. This includes your brain which mainly runs on glucose. Regardless of the diet you should focus on sticking to healthier carbs. The healthier carbs are items like vegetables, whole fruit, legumes, nuts, seeds, whole grains (the real whole grains such as oats and even brown rice), and Tubers (ex: potatoes). The things to avoid are basically those that you can almost autumnally classify as unhealthy, like sugar, candy, and white bread (refined carbohydrates).
Fiber is actually a carb that people unwittingly avoid. Fiber is a type of carb that the body can’t process causing it to pass through the body. Fiber plays a large role in digestion and allows your body to pass food easier.
To count carbs depends exactly on your diet plan. Most carb based diets allow you to subtract the quantity of fiber from the total carbs. If an item shows 30g of carbs and 3g of fiber this would mean you would count 27g of carbs toward to daily allowed limit. Again check your diet restrictions and make sure you count your servings correctly.
Count Fiber!
Just a side note regarding fiber, when restricting carbs it is easy to over look you fiber intake and having too little fiber can cause really annoying issues in digestion.
Conclusion
This simple thing to understand about a food label is not to count on assumptions. Even though something may say it’s healthy and all natural you should always look at the label and just pay attention to key parts.