When my kids come with me shopping, they will ask me to buy snacks. They are attracted to colorful packages with crunchy things like chips, crackers and cookies. Food marketing is an art.
My son is already so used to seeing me reading labels - he will say "Mama, read the label! Check if we can have it."
When you are building healthy eating habits for your family, it is important to know what is in the food you choose. Choices become building materials for growing cells. I am glad there are regulations to put nutrition information labels on food so I will be aware.
Easy rules to practice reading food labels:
- Read at least a few labels as you shop. The more you practice reading food labels, the more effortless it becomes. The most important part is the list of ingredients.
- Check the ingredients list. The main message of the product is usually conveniently placed right in front of your eyes, while the whole list of ingredients is in smaller print. There are surprises in even simple things. For example, dried fruit - some might include sugar, oils and preservatives.
- Fruit and vegetables have no labels and include one ingredient only.
- Golden rule of food shopping - short ingredient list of up to 5 is the best.
- First ingredient is the biggest quantity by weight. Note - same things may be listed under different names. For example, there are many different names for simple sugars. All of them have very similar nutrition values - look for sugar, brown sugar, light brown sugar, molasses, corn syrup, etc. When listed separately they might not come as first ingredient, while the product is mainly sugar.
- If you don't know what it the ingredient or can't read it, most probably it shouldn't go into your body. It can. But what is the reason you might want to put it there?
- Notice serving size when comparing ingredients of different brands.
Whole milk yogurt with maple syrup
Ingredients: pasteurized whole milk,
maple syrup, organic skim milk powder,
live probiotic cultures.
No comments:
Post a Comment