Labels: misleading or misunderstood?

Most of us wrangle our way through more than a few nutrition labels while on our weekly shopping trek. We pay attention to calories per serving and number of servings per container, look at protein, carbs, and fat, take notice of sugars, try to avoid transfats, choose lower sodium, and search for ways to get more fiber.


Once we find those brands we like, we don't have to examine every label and shopping becomes a little faster and easier.

But food manufacturers are smart. They are constantly changing packaging in hopes of luring us to new - or even not new - products with buzzwords that capture our attention. Here are a few and what they really mean:

"calorie free" means it has less than 5 calories per serving

"low salt" should contain 1 gram or less of sodium per serving

"low sodium" means the product has less than 140 milligrams of sodium per serving

"sodium free" products must have less than 5 milligrams of sodium per serving, including sea salt

"reduced fat" means less than 25% of the total calories per serving come from fat 

"fat free" foods should have less than .5 grams of fat per serving

• Often reduced fat and fat free foods have added sugar and salt to enhance the flavor (that was the fat's job) so don't assume those foods are "healthier."

"cholesterol free" products must have less than 2 mg of cholesterol per serving

"low cholesterol" means less then 20 grams of cholesterol per serving

• But remember, your body makes cholesterol out of saturated fat so it's not just the cholesterol already present in a food we need to worry about. Another reason to opt for reduced fat dairy products!!

"high fiber" must contain at least 5 grams of fiber per serving

"good source of fiber" should have at least 3 grams of fiber per serving

"natural" means there are no artificial ingredients

"organic" means no pesticides were used when growing the product nor any preservatives when packaging

"fortified" means vitamins and trace elements have been added during manufacturing, as in most breakfast cereals.

• Are you confused yet?? The food manufacturers are SO tricky!

A couple great tips when choosing foods and reading food labels:

1. The shorter the list of ingredients, the better.
2. If you can't pronounce an ingredient, you probably don't want to eat too much of it either.
3. Think about a target with the bull's eye of the target being how a food originated: eat as close to the bull's eye as possible. The more a food has been "messed with" either by adding more ingredients, during processing, packaging or preserving, through enhancing or changing it in any other way, the further it gets from the bulls eye. The further from the bull's eye -- likely the less healthy and nutritious.