Nutrition Facts And You

By Jenny Mathers. Editor
Reviewed by Kimberly Tessmer, RD LD on 3rd June 2009.

The nutrition facts on the back of food packaging is a powerful ally in battling confusion about what should eventually go in your mouth and the mouths of your family.

While some shoppers regard the label as confusing and therefore barely look at it, if you want to lose weight, this information should be one of the first things you look at and you need to understand how it affects you.

A good explanation of the nutrition labels can be found within the 7 day email course that you get free when you sign up for the newsletter. So if you don't understand the label, be sure and sign up - it's free.

One of the elements of the label to look at is the amount of calories each serving holds. If you eat a serving of this item you can add up the amount of calories you have consumed or simply add in a similar portion of the food into your MyPyramid meal tracker. I've written a page here about MyPyramid - have a read, it has a link directly to the site.

A key issue that you need to remember when you are considering the nutrition facts are your nutrition goals and that in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, you need to eat with variety ensuring that your body gets a combination of carbs, fats, protein, vitamins and minerals - there is no way to get around this.

When talking with young, educated women, one of the issues that never fails to come up is their fear of carbs. If you want to lose weight and get healthy, eating predominantly only one type of food will not get you long term, healthy weight loss. Eating according to your goals is the key and making sure that you are getting a balance of carbs, protein and fats is important.

What The Label Doesn't Tell you

There are some things that the label doesn't tell you. These are how much of the carbs in the food are actually complex carbs and the glycemic index (GI) of the food.

How To Find Out How Much Complex Carbs Is In The Food

While the complex carbs aren't directly indicated, if you subtract the amount of sugar from the total carbs - you will be left with how much of the food is complex carbs.

Glycemic Index (GI), And The Nutrition Facts Label

The information on the nutrition facts label gives you some information which may or may not help you make a decision as to whether the food is likely to have a high or low glycemic index.

Looking at the sugar and fiber content of the food can give you some clues about the likely glycemic index.

In some cases the higher the sugar content, the more likely the food will have a higher GI and a lower amount of complex carbohydrates.

When Kim reviewed this article, she commented to me that it would be hard to judge the glycemic index of some foods based on the amount of fiber, complex carbohydrates and simple sugars. So I decided to go looking for an example. The example I found was 1 cup of cooked parsnip. It has about 27g of total carbs, 6g of fiber and 8g of sugar in it - meaning that 21 grams of this food is complex carbohydrates. Yet, the mean glycemic index of parsnip is very high - 97.

So you can see that you may be able to guess the glycemic index of some foods, however this may also cause you to make an incorrect assumption about other foods as to whether it has a high or low glycemic index. You are much better off, going to http://www.glycemicindex.com/ or http://www.nutritiondata.com/

Is GI Important To My Weight Loss ?

Using the glycemic index of some foods can give the impression that they are bad for you. Some foods such as bananas and potatoes have a high GI but are a perfectly healthy addition to a weight loss regime.

If you use the information on the nutrition facts label to determine the GI of a food and whether or not to eat it, you may be cutting out some very beneficial foods unnecessarily.

If you use the information about fiber, complex carbs and sugar to choose those with more fiber, more complex carbs and less sugar, you will be eating food that keeps you fuller for longer and that's good news for your weight loss.

The Reality of The Good Carb/Bad Carb Mantra

Some people like to call foods with a lower glycemic index "Good Carbs" and those with a higher glycemic index "Bad Carbs". Really there is no such thing as a good and bad carb - only that one kind of carb may not be as appropriate for your nutrition goals.

So when assessing the nutrition facts and your diet, be sure that you're getting a balance of food types, eating a wide variety within each food group and considering the nutrition facts label according to your nutrition goals.

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