One of the great nutrition ironies of our time is that the healthiest foods, the ones that should take up most of our shopping carts (fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh fish, and lean meat) don’t come with Food Facts or nutrition claim labels! In contrast, processed foods—the ones that come in boxes, cans, and bags—come with so much information that it’s difficult to know what’s important, what to believe, and how to use the information to make good choices! But knowing how to read food labels is critical to eating a healthy diet. To ensure I was writing so non-nutritionists could understand, I had my husband read a draft of this blog. After having to spend hours helping the poor man get his eyes put back in his head, I decided to split it into four parts. No one section is greater than the others and it’s important you read all four. I just felt it was better to break it up into readable sections than to have someone start this blog, get tired, and never get all the information I need to convey.
The purpose of this 4-part blog is to help you navigate all those words and numbers on food labels and use them to make the healthiest choices while you’re trying to get in and out of the supermarket as quickly as possible!
Part 1 deals with the first thing you see on the front of the package: the name of the food!
Part 2 deals with nutrition and health claims on the front of the package.
Part 3 addresses the Nutrition Facts Label.
Part 4 will wrap things up with a discussion of the list of ingredients that can seem so perplexing at times as well as food safety warnings.
As a treat for those who stick with this whole mega-blog, I’ll list some sites at the end of part 4 where you can see the origins of some of the important information I’ll be citing…and more in-depth info.
Since I’m going to be addressing food labels in parts let me give you the bottom line up front! The most important pieces of information you need when you’re buying food are:
- the number of calories per serving and the size and number of servings per package;
- whether what the product calls itself is really reflected by the first two to three items in the ingredients list (for example, if you think you’re buying whole wheat bread, the first ingredient had better be whole wheat flour);
- the percent of the day’s recommended intakes of sodium, added sugar, calcium, and fiber; and
- if you have a serious food allergy, an obvious absence of the allergen from the ingredients’ list and an assurance the food was manufactured in a facility free of the allergen.
Now let’s get on with food packaging.
The Anatomy of Food Packages
To simplify our shopping jobs, let’s divide food labels into their (roughly 4) parts:
- The front of the package (again, parts 1 and 2 of this blog)
- The Nutrition Facts label (part 3 of this blog)
- The list of ingredients (part 4 of this blog)
- Everything else, that is, all the other information such as the potential presence of allergens and cooking suggestions (part 4).
The Front of the Package
Fronts of food packages are like tiny billboards: The information you find on the front of a food package is designed to make that item jump into your shopping cart. Besides the brand name, the front label includes the identity of the food item (product name); oftentimes some facsimile (a photo or drawing) of the food, often bearing no resemblance to the real product; and optional descriptors, nutrient claims, something called qualified health claims, some descriptions of the amounts of some nutrients, and occasionally something called a 3rd party certification (for example certification by a private organization that a food satisfies their criteria to be called organic, in addition to satisfying federal criteria).
What’s in a Name? The Truth about Food Product Names
Product names can be surprisingly misleading. For example, capitalizing on our knowledge that fruits and vegetables are healthy, food manufacturers would like us to believe they’ve “healthed” up everything from pasta to crackers to snack chips and candy. Yet some of these products—like vegetable chips and veggie pasta—may contain only the merest traces of vegetables, and even the snacks you sometimes see at health food stores that are clearly sliced veggies may be no better nutrition-wise than potato chips because they’re fried and salted. Fried plantains and banana chips are also no healthier than potato chips and far less healthy (and more calorie laden) than their fresh counterparts. Fruit snacks, even the ones that boast Vitamin C, may contain virtually no fruit, relying on artificial colors and flavors to lend fruitiness.
What to do
When choosing products, compare the name of the food to the ingredients list. Understand that whole grain foods should have the whole grain as the first ingredient. When a product name boasts veggies or fruit, read the fine print and the ingredients list (I’ll cover deciphering the list of ingredients in the 4th installment. Unless vegetables are listed as the first or second ingredient, you’re no better off choosing the veggie product than the one without veggies. Head to the produce section, freezer section, even the canned food aisle for your produce!
The Truth about “Standards of Identity,” Legal Food Definitions
Believe it or not, the federal government strictly regulates and defines which food products can legally call themselves whole wheat (bread, pasta), milk, cheese, chocolate, ice cream, mayonnaise, and several others, based on whether they meet specific levels of particular ingredients. These standards are listed in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR, sometimes called the U.S. Code or the U.S.C., not to be confused with our Trojan friends up the freeway). However, the labeling laws are not always rigorously enforced.
For example, only products made from 100% whole wheat flour (that is, no white flour) can call themselves whole wheat products. What is the big deal with whole wheat and other whole grains? A whole grain comprises three layers: the fiber-rich bran (outside), the protein-, vitamin-, and mineral-rich germ (like a tiny heart), and the starchy endosperm (the middle layer). While whole grains and whole grain flour contain all three layers, white flour has the bran and germ removed, leaving only the starchy endosperm. So naturally, whole grain bread, crackers, other baked goods, and pasta are higher in nutrients than their white flour counterparts. But to confuse consumers, manufacturers may call their product “whole grain” (products whose whole grain content can be as little as half the total amount of grains) or even just “wheat” (meaning the product may be made entirely of white flour) or the labels may sport terms like “contains whole wheat” or “made with whole grains,” terms that have no real definitions.
What Milk?
Dairy products are among the strictest in terms of definitions. The Food and Drug Administration has recently indicated their intention to begin enforcing the definition of milk, which clearly specifies that milk comes from cows. As you know if you’ve visited a food store in the past few decades, many white liquids—including those derived from coconut, nuts, soy, hemp, and other plants—call themselves milk. Although such word “quibbles” are sometimes about market capture and money (e.g. chocolate companies don’t want just any sweet brown candy to be allowed to call itself chocolate), the milk issue does have some legitimate nutritional implications: While cow’s milk is a naturally good source of protein and calcium, “milks” from plants are neither unless they’ve been fortified with added nutrients. It will be interesting to see what will be done about goat’s milk since it too is a good source of protein and calcium. It appears to exist—and will probably continue to be—in a legal loophole. And what will those in-development laboratory-produced meats be allowed to be called?!? Stay tuned!
As I mentioned, each type of dairy product (e.g., whole milk, 2% milk, low fat milk, cream, heavy cream, cheese…) has legally defined contents. Whole milk is cow’s milk that has had none of the fat removed. What is now called 2% fat milk (also sometimes still known as reduced fat milk, although “reduced fat” has a specific definition when applied to all other foods) is, by definition, milk for which the fat content is 2% by weight (not calorie content); 1% milk (also known as low fat milk) is 1% fat by weight; and nonfat milk (also known as skim milk) cannot exceed 0.5% fat. Just for comparison, whole milk is 3.25% fat, half and half is 10% to 12% fat, light cream is 20% fat, and heavy (whipping) cream is 35-38% fat.
Cheese is milk that has had a certain amount of moisture removed and is subjected to the effects of particular bacteria and/or molds. The methods required for production of many cheeses are actually specified in the CFR. Like milk, cheeses can also come in full fat or reduced fat varieties, but some products we consider cheese are legally required to be called processed cheese, cheese food, or spread, either because they consist of cheese combined with some other ingredient or because they are manufactured from various components of milk and other ingredients to resemble cheese. Frozen dessert names (ice cream, ice milk, sherbet, frozen yogurt) are similarly legally defined: e.g., ice cream must have greater than 10% milkfat.
Where’s the Beef?
“Regular” ground beef (hamburger meat) is approximately 15% fat by weight. Lean ground beef is 10% fat by weight, and extra lean is 5%. Your choice of ground beef has tradeoffs: The leaner the product, the more you will help to reduce your intake of saturated fat and the more meat you will have left after cooking to slap on that bun, but the more you will pay and the less flavor you will retain.
The Bottom Line
Know what you’re buying! If you are trying to reduce your intake of saturated fat, first try switching to leaner ground beef, or perhaps to 2%, 1%, or nonfat milk. If you’re confused by the reduced fat vs. low fat dairy labels (and who wouldn’t be?), try both and compare the flavor. Be aware that nut and other plant milks are usually not as nutritious as milks from animals. If it’s important to you to know you’re buying real cheese or chocolate or ice cream, make sure the ingredients lists reflect what the contents should be.
In part 2, we’ll delve into the rest of that stuff on the front of the package (i.e. the nutrition & health claims).