Making Sense of Nutrition Labels

I had a request to discuss nutrition labels, and how to make sense of them. I find the information presented on nutrition labels will only have relevance to you if you know how much you should be consuming per day. If the average person is unsure of how much protein, carbs, and fats they should be consuming, then the information presented on the label gets even more confusing. It is very important to understand that every single person is different. Two girls with the same estimated height, stature, weight, and body composition, should not receive the same plan. Their foundation, background eating, workout habits, and current habits are a massive part of the equation, which is where people start to differentiate. This is why a lot of workout advice is very general and all-encompassing, because it is hard to be specific when you are speaking to the public. Everyone comes from a different place and has a different foundation to work with. When it comes to food labels, the “percent daily values” are not going to be the same for every single person. That being said, here are some of my suggestions for reading food labels:

        1) Know what you are consuming every day

Do you know approximately how many calories and how much protein, carbs, and fats you are consuming daily? Probably not, so this is where I would start before you try to make sense of a nutrition label. First and foremost, train your metabolism and your body to understand it is consuming the same amount of calories/carbs/protein/fats every day, then do this on repeat for minimum 3 weeks. I would start this by planning what you are going to eat for the week. You do not need to eat something different for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day, so you can make prepping a lot easier. Pick a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and two snacks you can commit to, and prep for 3-4 days at a time. Once you have figured out what you are eating every day, now you have a start point. The start point is understanding exactly how many carbs, protein, and fats you are consuming, which is why I ask my clients for a 3-day food diary. You cannot change or alter anything if you have no reference to any beginning numbers. So find out how much you are consuming first, and then work from there. Side note: It is likely just by eating this way for 3 weeks you will feel better and notice results.

        2) Look at the portion size

When you scan the nutrition label, you are looking at the calories, protein, fat, carbs, and then the ingredients i.e. what it is made of. Once you see those numbers, you need to look at the portion size they have “recommended”. It is usually a very small portion, so keep this in mind especially when you look at the carbs and fats. I would say generally per meal, you are looking for 25-30g protein, 10-12g fat, and 20-25g carbs.

        3) What is it made of?

Keep in mind, ingredients listed closest to the top take up a greater percentage of the product. So if sugar is in the top 4, the carbs are mostly added sugars. If you look at a product and realize the fat and carbs are high, I would recommend looking at the ingredients and seeing what types of fats and carbs have been added in to make up that number. It could be healthy oils such as extra virgin olive oil, flax oil, chia seeds, nuts, nut butters etc. Or, it could be butter, modified palm oil, corn oil, canola oil, which are not as great a fat source, and therefore a cheaper product. For carbs,  look to make sure it is not added simple sugar such as sugar, glucose, cane sugar, etc. You would want your carbs to be made of whole grains. For protein, I would make sure it does not contain a lot of fillers, or mostly made from soy.

        4) How I would determine a food product healthy or not

I am going to pick an 85g CloverLeaf Spicy Thai Chili flavoured tuna to demonstrate the process I would personally go through when determining if I would use the food item, manipulate it somehow, or not use it all together. The reason I picked tuna is because its fast, easy to throw in a lunch bag, comes flavoured (less prep), and would likely be picked by someone trying to become healthier.

Clover Leaf Spicy Thai Chili example:

1) I think the calories are weak, I definitely would not have only this tuna for a lunch, it would not even be enough for a snack. 

2) I would say its weak in the protein category, especially if I wanted to hit 25g-30g protein.

3) It is also weak in the amount of carbs, so I would be pairing it with about 15g carbs. I would find a whole wheat wrap, an open faced sandwich with 1 slice, or 1/4C rice.

4) This being said, the 9g carbs in this tuna can are likely not from the tuna itself, because plain tuna would not have any carbs, maybe under 1g. It is likely 9g carbs because they have put in sugar in order to make it a “Thai sauce”. You can see where sugar is listed under carbs it says 9g which means it’s all simple sugar. To confirm, I look down and read the ingredients, sugar is 4^th on the list, meaning it is quite prominent in the tuna. For 85g and 9g of that being straight sugar, that’s not a good quality carb at all, and I don’t like how its 9g of straight added sugar.

5) The fat is moderate, although I am not sure where it is coming from because tuna is lean, so I will look at the ingredients to see where the fat is coming from just as I did for the carbs. The 3^rd ingredient is sunflower oil, so they have added in oil probably as a binding agent, and for taste. I am not a fan of sunflower oil, I would say olive oil or coconut oil would have been a better fat source. I would probably add 1 tsp. organic extra virgin olive oil to the wrap or open faced sandwich.

6) When I look at the ingredients list, I’m not a fan of the sunflower oil, sugar, or the modified corn starch. They are not really necessary and do not need to be ingested.

7) Overall, I would give this a C+ grade, because it’s lacking a lot in macronutrients, and even if I did double up the portion to meet my macro quotas i.e. 2 cans, I wouldn’t want it to be 14g of sunflower oil and 18g added sugar.

8) I would recommend buying a whole wheat wrap, using 1 tbsp. 0% plain Greek yogurt to mix into 1 can plain tuna, and add pepper, salt, lemon, hot sauce, and seasonings yourself. Of course, that takes a bit more time, but it’s higher quality version of the same thing, with better ingredients.

All in all, you don’t want to pick a product that is highly processed, has fillers, remnants of plastic, or ingredients you cannot pronounce. Try avoid eating a lot of frozen, processed, or highly packaged foods because it gets more complicated to determine whether the item is actually food, or food fraud. Pick high protein, few ingredients, low fat, and low carb options. Try to make your protein a true protein, carbs a real carb, and your fats healthy and non-artificial.

Don’t forget to stay in touch! Comment below and let me know what you are thinking. Have these exercise and meal plan tips helped you enhance your diet and workout plan? #DollTalk