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| Watch out for food labels!; Scheilah J. Romero | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 20 2004, 04:43 AM (60 Views) | |
| ed-gracetoday | Sep 20 2004, 04:43 AM Post #1 |
Elder
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Watch out for food labels! by Scheilah J. Romero So you are on your way to the supermarket and you have everything you need on your handy-dandy shopping list you made the night before. As you stroll down the lane, you get lured towards the cookies and chips. You skim the shelves, trying to find something halfway decent and nutritious to buy. "Fat-free, 100% Fat-free, Low Fat," those words seep deep into your brain as your mouth begins to water at the very thought of being able to finally enjoy Oreo Cookies without gaining a pound. But is that the whole truth? Or could there be more to the picture? Did you know that each year Americans eat approximately 49,000 extra calories, which means a weight gain totaling 14 extra pounds of body fat annually? Our population is slowly getting fatter and it is mainly from so-called "fat-free foods." What many of these food labels are not telling you, is that while it is fat-free, it is loaded with sugar. This indirectly causes weight gain in the end. It is the amount of sugar that has been added to all these magical treats that allows for them to be called fat-free. So, what can you do to protect yourself and become a savvy consumer? Here are a few tips that will help you skim the food label for deceiving ingredients: --Make sure you read everything. Do not stop at the saturated fat content, go on to the sugar content, which is important too. --Try to compare calories coming from fat to the total calories. --Protein. Look for protein rich foods like low-fat granola, which makes for a great, nutritious snack you can combine with yogurt. --Whole grains. Try to buy whole grain products such as oatmeal, whole grain breads and pastas. --Avoid eating things that have the words enriched, white flour or bleached in their ingredient label. The more enriched a product, the less nutritious. White flour has a very high sugar content or glycemic index that will only make you want to eat more of it. Read beyond the nutrition label That's exactly right, not only are you going to need to read the whole nutrition label, but you are also going to have to skip down to the bottom of the box. You need to find the actual ingredients. Most manufacturers list ingredients in quantity order. For example, if you are buying peanut butter and peanuts are the first listed, then peanuts are what have been mostly used to make the product. Note, while many people believe that peanut butter is a great source of protein, it is packed with hydrogenated oil. Try buying the natural kind that only lists peanuts and oil. While you may think it has a lot of fat, it is good fat and not the artery clogging type. It is extremely important to read beyond the front of the box as well as just the first two lines of the nutrition label. Do not get fooled into believing that fat-free will never cause you to gain weight, on the contrary, it is mental deception that will make you believe it is okay to consume it. So the next time you go grocery shopping, bring along your consumer savvy tips and read, even if it takes a little longer to shop, at least you will be going home happy, knowing that you are not a victim of deceptive food labels. Bio Scheilah J. Romero is currently working towards a M.A. in Exercise Physiology . She resides in Baldwin, New York. |
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| angelic | Sep 20 2004, 05:06 AM Post #2 |
Trustee
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This is a good post, thanks. One other thing I might add is to look at the 'sodium' content...sometimes that so-called fat free is 2,3 or even 4 times the sodium...that will hold the water making for a gain, which is defeating and sometimes causes a person to give up. (being on a salt free diet for years, it is usually the first thing I look at , then the calories, fat, sugar, and ingredients..) |
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| ed-gracetoday | Sep 20 2004, 06:51 AM Post #3 |
Elder
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Great additional advice! |
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