Nutrition Label Reading

oo7

Hi, can anyone point me in the right direction... i am looking for a site that explains nutrition labels etc...

I have searched through a lot of sites through google but most of them seem very americani"z"ed... thanks in advance for your help

EileenG

Ideally, look for labels that give the breakdown per 100g of food. Most do, but some give the reading per portion, which is nearly always a trick with numbers.

So, the first thing to look at is the calories per 100g of food. For vegetables, you can expect to see a number around 20-50 calories. For raw chicken breast, it would be around 120 calories per 100g. For leanish meat, around 200 cals per 100g of raw meat. Cheese is around 400 cals per 100g, and butter around 750.

Then look at the protein. This is a single number, no messing about.

Now look at the carbohydrate. This is often broken down into sugar and starch, but really, this is meaningless. Something with a low or zero number for sugar (like rice cakes) would be extremely high gi and turn to sugar as soon as you eat them. A more useful thing to look at is the fibre. If the number for fiber is reasonably high compared to the total carb figure, it's likely to be an unprocessed food. And of course, look at the total carb figure.

Now look at the fat. This is usually broken down into saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. This isn't a big deal, since saturated fats are not evil. What they will never mention is transfats. If you add up the sat, mono, and poly fats, and they amount to less than the total fat figure, the difference is transfats. Those are evil and to be avoided.

There will probably also be a figure for sodium. Keep an eye on this, but if most of your foods are fresh whole foods, you don't need to worry about it.