"Investing some time in learning about food and its impact on your health will pay big dividends," explains Kathryn Kolasa, PhD, RD, LDN, professor of nutrition education and services at East Carolina University (Greenville, North Carolina). And when the dividends come in the form of a sleek, healthy body, who isn't concerned with the bottom line?
Because we don't have the space to discuss every food available, we decided to pick apart portions of the "Nutrition Facts" label on cereal - a food that represents the wide array of choices and brands available in many other foods. As you'll see, a little label knowledge goes a long way, and our tips can help you crack the contents code on foods you buy throughout the store.
Serving-size savvy
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says serving sizes listed on food labels are meant to reflect what's actually consumed, but this is rarely the case. Though we hate to admit it, most of us eat more than the suggested 1 ounce of chips or 1 tablespoon of salad dressing at a time. Instead, Debra Wein, MS, RD, president of sensiblenutrition.com, thinks of serving sizes as a standard of measure. She says they help us follow the Food Guide Pyramid, which is an appropriate nutrition plan for active women.
Always consider how much of a food you're actually going to eat. Eating twice the amount represented in a serving size means, of course, that you'll also consume twice the calories, fat, carbohydrates and all other nutrients. Keep in mind, too, that serving sizes aren't uniform. Although the FDA says serving sizes are usually consistent within products, foods such as cereals have different weights and, consequently, different serving sizes.
The nutrition information for Cheerios, for example, is based on a 1-cup serving; for Honey Bunches of Oats it's three-fourths cup; for low-fat granola, the heaviest cereal, it's one-half cup. Overlooking this discrepancy would be a costly mistake: If you ate 1 cup of granola (without milk), you'd actually get 50 calories from fat compared with the 20 you'd get from 1 cup of Honey Bunches of Oats, and only 15 in an equal serving of Cheerios. Serving size may not be the first thing you're accustomed to looking at, but it holds the key to understanding all other label information, especially when you're making comparisons.
FAT - the good, the bad & the ugly
This line on food labels may be what catches your attention first. But do you know how to accurately decipher what it says? Unsaturated fat is actually a "good" fat, because it can help lower LDL (bad) cholesterol and raise HDL (good) cholesterol. Olive and canola oils, for example, are high in monounsaturated fat; sunflower, corn and vegetable oils are high in polyunsaturated fat. But if only saturated fat is on a label, you can't reliably determine how much unsaturated fat the food contains.
"Bad" fat is the LDL cholesterol-raising saturated fat found in foods that are typically of animal origin, such as milk, meat and sour cream, Wein notes. She advises against eating foods in which more than one-third of its fat is saturated. At this time, saturated fat is the only kind of fat required to be listed on the "Nutrition Facts" label.
But there's more: Under the umbrella of saturated fat lies trans fat, which also clogs arteries and raises bad cholesterol. Yet it isn't required to be on the label, nor is it taken into account in claims that the product contains low or no cholesterol, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) in Washington, D.C. Trans fat occurs naturally in some foods but is also produced when fats are hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated. This process - which turns oil into spreadable margarine, for instance - alters chemical states and creates fatty acids.
