Do You Even Read Bro?

There exists no perfect checklist of requisites for staying fit. What's more interesting is that you could shrewdly avoid certain details and still manage to keep up. When I say 'shrewdly', you know there's something that shouldn't be crossed out of the list. Let's address the simplest but the most underrated suggestion you'd ever get. Why is it important to scan the labels before you buy your food? What exactly should we look for and what inferences could be drawn from the list of ingredients and the nutritional label?

A very obvious thing recapitulated - nutritional labels don't spell whether the food stuff is healthy or not. However, they do reveal the reality in an indirect manner. Browsing through the label and the ingredient list, you could definitely figure out whether the product in your hands goes well with your fitness goals or not. Supposedly a diabetes patient goes shopping. What should he/she consider in the nutrition label? Clearly, a diabetic could not afford carbohydrates in the form of simple sugars or better say monosaccharides. Certain eatables in the grocery store would advertise low sugar on the front but as you turn around for the table of contents, you could find sources of simple carbohydrates clearly mentioned in the ingredients list. These may be in the form of refined flour or something else. Similarly, commodities proclaiming to consist of whole wheat may turn out to be made up of 50 plus percentage of refined flour and may carry an unacceptable amount of sugar per serving. This doesn't mean that consumption of such food products would lead to a sudden and serious damage for anyone but what I want to convey is that without reading the nutrition facts, the chances that you'd save yourself from committing diet mistakes are as low as none.

A detailed description of recommended dietary choices for each and every ailment is out of the scope of this article but a general suggestion would promote a diet low in simple carbohydrates (sugar/refined flour), saturated as well as trans fats, cholesterol and sodium. This holds good for almost anyone unless prescribed otherwise by a medical professional. Now let's try to understand nutritional labels by examples.

Following is nutritional label for chocolate milk by some brand.

What is the very first thing you see in the tag? Do you see the serving size? Okay, so they've mentioned the nutritional content for 1 cup of their chocolate milk product herein. Could you tell what's the measurement they've mentioned for 1 serving of this product? It's 240 ml. 

Clearly, we could draw an inference that every 240 ml of this chocolate milk would have 200 Kilo calories of energy. Don't be surprised when I say Kilo calories. It's important to note that at all the places you see Calories with a Capital 'C', it means Kilo calories. If it has to be meant calories it would be written starting with a non capital 'c' . This is nothing but a convention. You should make sure that you keep within the limits of energy consumption on a daily basis. For a better understanding we need to look at the macro and micro nutrient breakdown of the energy offered. We need energy for survival but not through unwanted sources like bad fats or simple carbs.

Following conclusions regarding macro-nutrients can also be made from the same label :

• Every 240 ml of this chocolate milk has 5 grams of fat out of which 2 grams is what we call good fat(unsaturated fat), the saturated fat content being 3 grams per 240 ml of the milk. 
• Every 240 ml of this chocolate milk has 150 mg of cholesterol and 8 grams of protein.
• Every 240 ml of this chocolate milk has 32 grams of carbohydrate out of which 30 grams come from Sugar, dietary fiber content being less than a gram.

Let's move on to the section that delineates the micro-nutrient content. Wait! Why does this look different? Vitamin A 10%. What does that mean? Let's Skip this section for a while and look at what's written in the footnote. Do you see 'Percent Daily Values'? It also says that these values marked in percentage are valid for a 2000 K cal daily diet. What does this mean now? Let me explain! For a person who consumes a total of 2000 K cal of energy in one full day, 240 ml of this chocolate milk product would provide him with 10% of the total Vitamin-A he should be consuming daily through his 2000 K cal daily diet. He is expected to gain another 90% of Vitamin-A intake through other food sources present in his diet. Similarly, inferences can be drawn for rest of the values marked in percentage, logic being the same for the percentage values mentioned in the macro-nutrient section. It should be kept in mind that not everyone has a precise 2000 K cal daily intake. I hope I was able to explain things properly.

Now, we shall look at the ingredients list. No, this is not same as the nutrition label. Nutrition labels breakdown the nutrient profile of the food whereas the ingredients list broadly specifies the names of  the raw materials used in it's preparation. Here, have a look at this sample ingredients list.

The reference image you see above shows the list of ingredients used to prepare the chocolate product. Ingredients list is generally found below the nutritional label if not adjacent to it. Looking at the list of ingredients you can always make a better choice and avoid things you'are allergic to or things that do not match your health requirements. 

To sum things up, let's have a look at some practical applications and benefits of having these labels on each and every food item  being sold for money in the market.

• Tracking and managing calorie intake precisely
• Doesn't matter whether you're on a fat loss program or gaining weight, you can't better stick to your program unless and until you're sure about how much energy you acquire through foods daily. When you read and buy stuffs, you definitely know what and how much to eat to match your needs. 
• Comparing and selecting between two or more food products
• When on a fat loss diet, you'd look for something rich in protein but low in carbs and unwanted fats. You can always compare two brands for their similar product types (say milk) and pickup the product that feels better on the label.
• Decide what to buy to deal with specific nutrition deficiency
• An example could be someone who is struggling with constipation issues. Such a person would need more fibers in the diet. Browsing through the labels of various fibrous food stuffs and selecting the one with adequate amount of fibers should prove beneficial to the concerned individual.
• Determine primary nutrient content in a product
• If a commodity advertises high fiber on the front of its cover but on the nutrition label the saturated fat or simple sugar content is much higher, there is no way it can be regarded as a source of fiber. Reading the labels definitely help overcome the marketing gimmicks sported by some brands on the cover itself.
• Read and avoid products with allergic ingredients
• This is a direct benefit of reading the ingredient list before buying anything. A vegetarian would not like to have something that has even a small trace of egg or flesh. I have seen some products suggesting Pure Veg on their cover and mentioning 'small traces of eggs' in the ingredient list. This may not be done intentionally but one of the many reasons can be the use of same machinery for the preparation of both Veg and Non-Veg commodities.

The benefits of reading the label before buying your food are manifold. I hope after having read this post you're in a position to better understand the language of the nutritional labels. In case something remains unanswered, feel free to use the comment box.