Read Food Labels

Reading food labels is one of the most important tools to help you make healthy choices when grocery shopping. Once you have the knowledge to choose nutrient dense and healthy foods, you will be able to make the right choices to fuel your body. When reading a food label, the most important areas to look at are the calories, servings per container, and sugar, fiber, carbs, fat and sodium. Choose foods which are high in protein and fiber and low in sugar, fat and sodium. The servings per container can be extremely important because many products will try to mislead you by providing the nutrient information for a very small serving size. This is very typical for snack foods. A bag of potato chips may only show 120 calories on the nutrient label but the actual serving size is only 7 chips! The overall calories for the entire bag may e over 1,000 calories. Make sure to read the serving per container to know the truth about the overall nutrient levels. Also, make sure to review the list of ingredients. The ones listed first are generally used in larger amounts as if you see things like high fructose corn syrup, sugar or lard, then its probably best to choose a healthier alternative.