Do you know how to read a food label? Learning the basics can help you shop smarter, lose weight and even help fight some diseases.
Lindsey McKaig, RD Registered Dietitian for BayCare Corporate Wellness, shares her best advice on how to properly decode food labels to make healthier food choices, what to look for, what to avoid and how to spot unregulated terms that might trip you up.
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Decoding the Food Label
Featured Speaker:
Lindsey McKaig, RD
Lindsey McKaig is a registered dietitian with a degree in nutrition and dietetics from Florida State University. Her areas of expertise include wellness, family cooking, child nutrition, and infant nutrition. Lindsey provides nutrition presentations and counseling as a part of BayCare’s corporate wellness program. Transcription:
Decoding the Food Label
Melanie Cole: Do you know how to read a food label? Learning the basics can help you shop smarter, lose weight and even help with diseases. My guest today is Lindsey McKaig. She's a registered dietician for Baycare Corporate Wellness. Let's go over the basics of the food label. Explain a little bit to the listeners about what they're seeing when they pick up something and read the label and try and understand what's going on.
Lindsey McKaig, RD: The food label, we also refer to it as the nutrition facts panel, so that’s the panel on the back of the food when you go ahead and turn it around. Let's start with the serving size. This is at the very top of that label. What's not on the label and what's even more important is the portion size. This is the portion of food that you actually end up eating. If a package of cookies lists one cookie as the serving size, but you eat three because who’s just eating one cookie, then you multiply everything by three. Where this can get a little tricky is individually packaged bottles of juice or soda, so a lot of these bottles that you would pick up and think it’s a serving, really, they have two servings in them. When you're going to look at the calories, you're going to multiply the calories by two if you drink that entire bottle. Next to calories is the calories from fat and most people can actually ignore that. In fact, this is being removed from the new food label as research shows that the type of fat consumed is actually more important than the amount of fat. Under calories is total fat, we've got saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. These are the fats we want to limit. Some packages will also list mono- and polyunsaturated fats and these are the healthy fats that we want more of in our diet. Sodium is listed next and this is another nutrient that many Americans really need to try to limit. This is also where it's important to pay attention to that serving size, so again a can of soup commonly has two servings in it but most people eat that entire can of soup. If you're trying to watch your sodium, make sure that you're paying attention to the actual amount of sodium in the serving size. We've got the total carbohydrates and this includes both the complex carbs and simple carbs, the simple carbs being those sugars. It's important if you're diabetic because it’s important to limit those grams of carbohydrates. The vitamins A and C as well as calcium and iron as also required to be listed as those are nutrients of concern when they started the labeling program.
Another important part of the label to pay attention to is the daily values or we refer to those at DVs. These are listed as percentages on the side of the listed nutrients. Daily values are average levels of new transfer per person eating 2,000 calories a day which is generally what most people should be eating. A food item with 5% DV of fat provides 5% of the total fat that person consuming at 2,000 calories a day should eat. A low DV is 5% or less, so you want to aim low in saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium. A high DV is 20% or more, so you want to aim high in vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
Melanie: I want to jump back to when you were discussing carbohydrates and diabetes because that’s so important and such top of mind today and people are hearing about prediabetes and not all carbohydrates are created equal. When you're looking at the label and you mentioned complex and simple, for a diabetic, what are they looking at when they look at a box of brown rice or a box of pasta? Are there some things that they should be looking for if they are told they're prediabetic or diabetic?
Lindsey: That's a great question. If they are prediabetic, it's actually more important when you're prediabetic to just trying to lose some weight and eat a healthier diet. If you're prediabetic, yes it should sound some alarm bells, but you don't quite have to start counting all of your carbohydrates. Just try to eat more fruits and veggies, try to eat more fiber in your diet and definitely try to exercise. For diabetics, you really want to pay attention to those grams of carbs. A lot of diabetics actually tend to zero in on the sugars but you want to pay attention to the carbs because the sugars are included within the carbohydrates. For instance, white rice, it could have no sugar in it and have 25 grams of carbs, but your body is going to break that down into sugars and it’s going to break it down really quick because it’s processed whereas something like brown rice, because it’s a whole grain and has a lot of fiber, it'll be the same amount of carbs but your body is going to break it down a lot slower so your blood sugar is not going to spike as much.
Melanie: Thank you so much for clearing that up because many people are confused. What about telling people to shop the perimeter when they're shopping and try and stick to foods with five or few ingredients? Obviously, fruits and vegetables don’t have any ingredients and we love to be eating those. It’s not always possible. What do you want people to know about the ingredients in a product?
Lindsey: It’s certainly not a bad rule to stick to five or fewer ingredients and shopping the perimeter is a great idea, that’s where you're going to get the most produce and fresh items, so foods with more than one ingredient, they're required to have an ingredient list on the food label. Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, so those ingredients in the largest amount are listed first. Let's say a cereal has only five ingredients, but those ingredients are rice flour, sugar, vegetable oil, salt and a flavor, that’s not a very nutritious food as a lot of the weight is sugar and refined flour, but there may be a cereal with many ingredients but all the ingredients are whole grains, nuts, seeds, maybe some dried fruit, but this would make up a very nutritious cereal even though there's a lot of ingredients. If you don’t currently pay attention to the ingredients list on the food you eat, it’s a really good habit to start becoming more aware of what you consume. It’s also important to remember that the front package labeling, it’s not as heavily regulated as that nutrition facts panel.
Melanie: While you're discussing unregulated food package terms, break down a few of them for us. We see the word natural, we see organic, we see grass fed and cage free and so many of them. Break down a few of the more popular ones and tell us what they mean.
Lindsey: Natural is a big term right now. We see that word everywhere. It’s on almost every food that I see and the grocery store right now is natural this, natural that, no matter what the food is, but this is not a regulated term so you really want to be careful about that. Looking at the ingredients is a really great way to identify how natural is this food. Cage-free, that’s another one that’s really not as regulated as you might think, so maybe the chickens aren’t in cages, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily happily roaming around on a cute little farm. They just might not be in individual cages. Organic is another good one that we see everywhere and that is regulated. If it has a USDA organic stamp on it, that is organic and you can trust that. Organic food is not necessarily healthier. It does have benefits for the environments, but eating more produce, more fruits and vegetables, that’s what's really more important for your health than seeking out things that are organic. A candy bar can be organic, but you're still eating a candy bar so you're not really adding to your health.
Melanie: What a great point and you explained that so well. You mentioned before that there's a new food label coming out. Tell us a little bit about that and wrap it up for us with your best advice as you tell us about this new food label, with your best advice about why it’s important that people learn to read that food label and pay attention to it and why it’s going to make us a smarter shopper.
Lindsey: It’s really important to pay attention to what you're buying. I totally agree. This new food label guideline, it’s administered by the FDA, it’s actually been in the work for some time and you may have noticed it popping up on some brands; the grocery store that I shop at, they've already switched to the new food label, the can of sparkling water that I'm drinking right now actually has the new food label. These new foods labels are a lot easier to understand for the consumer and I'm really excited for them to just be everywhere. It was supposed to go into effect this year, but the compliance state is now January 2020, so we’re going to seeing it in the next couple of years. Getting to the changes of the label, the two changes I'm most excited about are the updated serving sizes. These should better reflect what people actually eat. For instance, a pint of ice cream, it’s going to change from four servings per container to three servings per container, which is a lot more realistic to work what we’re actually eating when we buy that pint of ice cream.
The other thing I'm really excited about is the new line for added sugars. This will be great for products that have natural sugars in them like yogurt and cereals with dried fruit in them. This way, the consumer can determine how much of the sugar in that product is processed added sugar and how much is just naturally occurring sugar. Currently, that’s just impossible to tell that. Vitamin D and potassium will also be required on the new food label because these are two nutrients a lot of Americans are deficient in and they will replace the vitamins A and C, the two vitamins that we now get plenty of, which is great. This is the first change in the food labels in the past 20 years, so it’s pretty exciting.
Melanie: What great information and thank you so much for sharing your expertise and explaining these food labels, which can be quite complicated for some people, but so important for us to understand so that we can be better shoppers. Thanks again for joining us. You're listening to Baycare Health chat. For more information, please visit baycare.org. That’s baycare.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Decoding the Food Label
Melanie Cole: Do you know how to read a food label? Learning the basics can help you shop smarter, lose weight and even help with diseases. My guest today is Lindsey McKaig. She's a registered dietician for Baycare Corporate Wellness. Let's go over the basics of the food label. Explain a little bit to the listeners about what they're seeing when they pick up something and read the label and try and understand what's going on.
Lindsey McKaig, RD: The food label, we also refer to it as the nutrition facts panel, so that’s the panel on the back of the food when you go ahead and turn it around. Let's start with the serving size. This is at the very top of that label. What's not on the label and what's even more important is the portion size. This is the portion of food that you actually end up eating. If a package of cookies lists one cookie as the serving size, but you eat three because who’s just eating one cookie, then you multiply everything by three. Where this can get a little tricky is individually packaged bottles of juice or soda, so a lot of these bottles that you would pick up and think it’s a serving, really, they have two servings in them. When you're going to look at the calories, you're going to multiply the calories by two if you drink that entire bottle. Next to calories is the calories from fat and most people can actually ignore that. In fact, this is being removed from the new food label as research shows that the type of fat consumed is actually more important than the amount of fat. Under calories is total fat, we've got saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. These are the fats we want to limit. Some packages will also list mono- and polyunsaturated fats and these are the healthy fats that we want more of in our diet. Sodium is listed next and this is another nutrient that many Americans really need to try to limit. This is also where it's important to pay attention to that serving size, so again a can of soup commonly has two servings in it but most people eat that entire can of soup. If you're trying to watch your sodium, make sure that you're paying attention to the actual amount of sodium in the serving size. We've got the total carbohydrates and this includes both the complex carbs and simple carbs, the simple carbs being those sugars. It's important if you're diabetic because it’s important to limit those grams of carbohydrates. The vitamins A and C as well as calcium and iron as also required to be listed as those are nutrients of concern when they started the labeling program.
Another important part of the label to pay attention to is the daily values or we refer to those at DVs. These are listed as percentages on the side of the listed nutrients. Daily values are average levels of new transfer per person eating 2,000 calories a day which is generally what most people should be eating. A food item with 5% DV of fat provides 5% of the total fat that person consuming at 2,000 calories a day should eat. A low DV is 5% or less, so you want to aim low in saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, and sodium. A high DV is 20% or more, so you want to aim high in vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
Melanie: I want to jump back to when you were discussing carbohydrates and diabetes because that’s so important and such top of mind today and people are hearing about prediabetes and not all carbohydrates are created equal. When you're looking at the label and you mentioned complex and simple, for a diabetic, what are they looking at when they look at a box of brown rice or a box of pasta? Are there some things that they should be looking for if they are told they're prediabetic or diabetic?
Lindsey: That's a great question. If they are prediabetic, it's actually more important when you're prediabetic to just trying to lose some weight and eat a healthier diet. If you're prediabetic, yes it should sound some alarm bells, but you don't quite have to start counting all of your carbohydrates. Just try to eat more fruits and veggies, try to eat more fiber in your diet and definitely try to exercise. For diabetics, you really want to pay attention to those grams of carbs. A lot of diabetics actually tend to zero in on the sugars but you want to pay attention to the carbs because the sugars are included within the carbohydrates. For instance, white rice, it could have no sugar in it and have 25 grams of carbs, but your body is going to break that down into sugars and it’s going to break it down really quick because it’s processed whereas something like brown rice, because it’s a whole grain and has a lot of fiber, it'll be the same amount of carbs but your body is going to break it down a lot slower so your blood sugar is not going to spike as much.
Melanie: Thank you so much for clearing that up because many people are confused. What about telling people to shop the perimeter when they're shopping and try and stick to foods with five or few ingredients? Obviously, fruits and vegetables don’t have any ingredients and we love to be eating those. It’s not always possible. What do you want people to know about the ingredients in a product?
Lindsey: It’s certainly not a bad rule to stick to five or fewer ingredients and shopping the perimeter is a great idea, that’s where you're going to get the most produce and fresh items, so foods with more than one ingredient, they're required to have an ingredient list on the food label. Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, so those ingredients in the largest amount are listed first. Let's say a cereal has only five ingredients, but those ingredients are rice flour, sugar, vegetable oil, salt and a flavor, that’s not a very nutritious food as a lot of the weight is sugar and refined flour, but there may be a cereal with many ingredients but all the ingredients are whole grains, nuts, seeds, maybe some dried fruit, but this would make up a very nutritious cereal even though there's a lot of ingredients. If you don’t currently pay attention to the ingredients list on the food you eat, it’s a really good habit to start becoming more aware of what you consume. It’s also important to remember that the front package labeling, it’s not as heavily regulated as that nutrition facts panel.
Melanie: While you're discussing unregulated food package terms, break down a few of them for us. We see the word natural, we see organic, we see grass fed and cage free and so many of them. Break down a few of the more popular ones and tell us what they mean.
Lindsey: Natural is a big term right now. We see that word everywhere. It’s on almost every food that I see and the grocery store right now is natural this, natural that, no matter what the food is, but this is not a regulated term so you really want to be careful about that. Looking at the ingredients is a really great way to identify how natural is this food. Cage-free, that’s another one that’s really not as regulated as you might think, so maybe the chickens aren’t in cages, but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily happily roaming around on a cute little farm. They just might not be in individual cages. Organic is another good one that we see everywhere and that is regulated. If it has a USDA organic stamp on it, that is organic and you can trust that. Organic food is not necessarily healthier. It does have benefits for the environments, but eating more produce, more fruits and vegetables, that’s what's really more important for your health than seeking out things that are organic. A candy bar can be organic, but you're still eating a candy bar so you're not really adding to your health.
Melanie: What a great point and you explained that so well. You mentioned before that there's a new food label coming out. Tell us a little bit about that and wrap it up for us with your best advice as you tell us about this new food label, with your best advice about why it’s important that people learn to read that food label and pay attention to it and why it’s going to make us a smarter shopper.
Lindsey: It’s really important to pay attention to what you're buying. I totally agree. This new food label guideline, it’s administered by the FDA, it’s actually been in the work for some time and you may have noticed it popping up on some brands; the grocery store that I shop at, they've already switched to the new food label, the can of sparkling water that I'm drinking right now actually has the new food label. These new foods labels are a lot easier to understand for the consumer and I'm really excited for them to just be everywhere. It was supposed to go into effect this year, but the compliance state is now January 2020, so we’re going to seeing it in the next couple of years. Getting to the changes of the label, the two changes I'm most excited about are the updated serving sizes. These should better reflect what people actually eat. For instance, a pint of ice cream, it’s going to change from four servings per container to three servings per container, which is a lot more realistic to work what we’re actually eating when we buy that pint of ice cream.
The other thing I'm really excited about is the new line for added sugars. This will be great for products that have natural sugars in them like yogurt and cereals with dried fruit in them. This way, the consumer can determine how much of the sugar in that product is processed added sugar and how much is just naturally occurring sugar. Currently, that’s just impossible to tell that. Vitamin D and potassium will also be required on the new food label because these are two nutrients a lot of Americans are deficient in and they will replace the vitamins A and C, the two vitamins that we now get plenty of, which is great. This is the first change in the food labels in the past 20 years, so it’s pretty exciting.
Melanie: What great information and thank you so much for sharing your expertise and explaining these food labels, which can be quite complicated for some people, but so important for us to understand so that we can be better shoppers. Thanks again for joining us. You're listening to Baycare Health chat. For more information, please visit baycare.org. That’s baycare.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.