What are the different parts of a nutrition label?

A nutrition label has a lot of different information, but it can be a little tricky to navigate and it may be a little misleading. The first thing to pay attention to on a nutrition label is the serving size. Sometimes, for example, if you look at a bag of chips, maybe the serving size will be 10 chips, when you know that you're going eat 20 to 30 chips, so you might have to do some math and calculate, ok, the serving size is this, but I might be consuming this amount. So, you might have to do some addition or some multiplication, even. So once you kind of have your serving set up to what you know that you're going to consume, then you can look at the number of calories and typically, 2000 calorie diet is what most Americans are, that's kind of the standard caloric intake for the day; although, based on your body type and your fitness level, that can vary.

Then, there's fat content. There's total fat, and that's made up of saturated fat which is the worst kind of fat, which raises your bad cholesterol. And, transfat, which is the worst kind of fat, and you want to try to keep that to one mg or less daily. If you can stay away from transfat, that's a really good idea, healthful choice. But then there's polyunsaturated and monosaturated fats. These are actually good fats that help to raise your good cholesterol and are actually protective against the bad cholesterol. So, if possible, you want to maximize your mono and unsaturated fats, although polyunsaturated fats are much better than the saturated anyway.

Then there are carbohydrates. These are your sugars, it's broken down from the carbohydrate, and fiber is in there, too. The total carbohydrates are important to watch because this is where a lot of Americans get kind of tricked into over-consuming. Again, it's important to look at serving size, but if a food has a lot of carbohydrates and sugars, you know, sugars taste good and that's what drives people to eat greater portions than they should. One good rule of thumb to remember is 15 total carbohydrates equals one carbohydrate choice, especially for diabetics. You just kind of need to keep track of how many carbohydrates you're consuming in a day to keep those calories down.

Then there's protein. Protein is a very important building block of the body to keep your hair and muscles and cells strong. A lot of people don't get enough protein. They're over-consuming those carbohydrates, so you want to look at how many grams of protein are in that nutrition label and based on your servings, try to get close to the daily recommended allowance, rather than over-consuming carbohydrates and under-consuming protein. You want a nice balance there. But, again, the most important thing to look at is the serving size and that may help you to watch your portion sizes and it will be much better for weight control.