One key step towards maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle is paying close attention to the food labels before you buy any food product from the grocery store. It is important to know exactly where your food is coming from and its contents. The nutrition labels, as they say, provide inputs on what is there inside the packets. This gives a clear idea about which brand you should buy and which you shouldn’t buy. Check on why you need to find out what lies behind the packet as what you choose to consume from the grocery store impacts your health in more ways than one.
The Lowdown on the Nutrition Content
The two important things that food labels offer as far as information on ingredients and nutrition content is concerned, it gives clear segregation on calories, total fats, saturated fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. This information is one of the key aspects to consider while you are making additions and restrictions to your daily diet. You may also be intolerant to some food items that you may need to exclude such as dairy, nuts, and more. You need to find out which food suits you and which does not as they say food is a highly individualized thing, one man’s meat is another’s poison.
Watch What You Eat
You can also watch your weight as you monitor calories and your intake of sugar and salt. The truth is reading labels can help you eat a balanced diet and prevent diseases such as diabetes and a certain type of heart disease.
Reading labels while buying packaged foods helps you keep a tab on your health so that you don’t have to suffer. Keep a tab on the total carbs’ content as carbohydrates can turn into sugar while undergoing the digestion process.
Beware of the Sugar Content
Consuming too much sugar is one of the chief causes of heart disease and other chronic diseases. It is high in calories, a high-sugar diet is a key driver of amping up your blood sugar levels, this affects your health in countless ways. When you make an informed decision about your packaged food, you end up partaking in sugar from hidden sources, such as high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, sucralose, agave, carob syrup, and more. Reading food package levels and identifying the hidden sugar content is the first step towards health.
Understand the Calories Per Serving
When you read food labels and take a good look at the serving size mentioned, you can find out how many servings you are consuming. If you are consuming three servings of a particular food item, it means you’re eating three times more of the serving that is right for you. Eating more than the required serving will ensure that you will find your weight creeping up and soon you’ll find yourself facing health problems galore. Regular calorie tracking will help you keep in a calorie deficit, the best tool in your armory to lose weight.
Eliminate the Bad Fats
If you read your food labels well, you will be able to identify the bad fats that are surely a recipe for a health disaster. The fats that you need to be wary of are trans fats and saturated fats. When you are browsing through the supermarket aisle, you may be tempted to choose some of the most colorful packets that promise maximum health, however, they are full of saturated fats and trans fats. Be particularly wary of the word, partially hydrogenated fats since they are pretty high on transfats as well.
The main issue with reading food labels is we are enamored with what the nutrition labels are trying to tell us and hide the ones that they must tell us. The warning or the bad stuff comes in smaller letters, mentioned in an off-hand way as if that is not important. However, the bad fats, hidden sugar and more should be highlighted, so people should know exactly what they are putting on the plate.
The next time you visit your nearby grocery store, take a good look at the back of your packet and find out whether that fancy-looking packet with exotic-sounding ingredients is right for you or not. Learning to read food labels is the first step you take towards health and fitness.