What's On the Label?

Several years ago when we were living in Seattle, I was grocery shopping with a cart full of my own little kids. I had three kids who were all too young to be in school. So there they were, all of them with me at the store. It was always a race to see if I could finish the shopping before someone needed a nap, snack, or potty break, or before some empty-nester accused me of being a bad Mom for letting my oldest child wander a few inches from the cart. Ah, the good old days...

Anyway, I grabbed a carton of cottage cheese that happened to be on sale and decided to read the label. I was shocked to find an ingredient list looking something like this: Cultured Skim Milk, Nonfat Milk, Whey Protein Concentrate, Cream, Salt, Guar Gum, Mono And Diglycerides, Locust Bean Gum, Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate And Carbon Dioxide (preservative), Natural Flavors, Artificial Color, Carrageenan, Polysorbate 80, vitamin A Palmitate, Enzymes. Even that many years ago, I was an avid label reader and more informed (food-wise) than the average consumer. But I had always assumed that cottage cheese would just contain dairy product and a bit of salt. What in the world were all of those other ingredients, and what were they doing in my cottage cheese? As I did some further investigation, I found a carton of Daisy cottage cheese with these ingredients: cultured skim milk, cream, salt. That's it! The lesson came loud and clear-read food labels.

So, what's on the label? This is not exciting stuff, but it is extremely useful in making food choices. So, hunker down and focus on the label above. This example shows a nutrition facts label from an unknown food. On the top is the serving size, which for this product is 1/2 cup. Under that is the servings per container (13), so in this package there are thirteen 1/2 cup servings. Watch out for this one! Many food packages that look like they are meant for one person actually contain more than one serving per package. Drinks are notorious for this. The rest of the information is labeled per serving (1/2 cup). So, for the example above, there are 190 calories in 1/2 cup. 20 of those calories come from fat, which means that the other 170 calories come from carbohydrate and protein. Next is the total grams of fat. In this case, 2g. Companies are required to label saturated fat and trans fats. Trans fats should be avoided whenever possible. Many foods will also include other types of fats on the label. Next you have the amount of cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, sugars, and protein, all per serving amounts. Note that the sugar is total sugar, not added sugar. So, a 100% fruit juice will have quite a bit of sugar, which is the amount of sugar found naturally in the fruit. The only way to know which sugars are added to a product is to read the ingredient list. On the far right side is a list of percentages. These numbers are based on the recommendations for a person who eats 2,000 calories per day. Looking at our food label, if a person who should be consuming 2,000 calories a day ate 1/2 cup (one serving) of this product, they would get 3% of their daily recommendation of total fat, 12% of total carbohydrates, 16% of their fiber, 2% of their calcium, and 10% of their iron.

To see what's in a food, you look to the ingredient list. Every packaged food that has more than one ingredient is required to list the ingredients on the label. The ingredients are listed in order of predominance (by weight), with ingredients found in the greatest amounts listed first. Look for ingredients you would not stock in your kitchen. Make a note of these ingredients and look them up. There is a lot of information on the Internet. Some is reliable, some is not. Look at several sources to find out why that ingredient is used and what it is. Before long, you will be an informed food consumer.