3025: Which Food Labels Should I Really Read by Rachel Trotta on Serving Sizes

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[00:00:29] This is Optimal Living Daily Episode 3025 Which Food Labels Should I Really Read by Rachel Trotta of rachrottrotta.com And I'm Justin Malik. This is the podcast where I read to you everyday kind of like an audiobook

[00:00:44] and on Sundays I share an episode from a different podcast where we read to you. Today's comes from my brother's show Optimal Health Daily. If you like more about fitness, nutrition, diet, anything health related really you can find Optimal Health Daily wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:01:01] You can even submit your own questions and have them answered on Friday editions of this show. If you do that you'll get a copy of our Optimal Living Daily Workbook for free. You can send a health related question to health at oldpodcast.com

[00:01:16] and then listen in to the show on Fridays again that's Optimal Health Daily. But with that let's get right to the bonus episode as we optimize for a life. Which Food Labels Should I Really Read by Rachel Trotta of rachrottrotta.com Let's talk food labels.

[00:01:37] Last week one of my remote coaching clients sent me a picture with a What Do You Think? query. It shows boxes of oatmeal raisin cookies labeled cholesterol free, finest ingredients, no hydrogenated oils. So my client was wondering how do these cookies add up in terms of health?

[00:01:55] Does it make a difference to make a cholesterol free choice versus a regular cookie? What about gluten free? Organic? No added sugar. Vegan? Labels can be confusing and marketers often distort simple nutritional information with what's called a health halo.

[00:02:13] I'm not going to dive into the world of health food marketing and health halos today. Instead I'm going to share with you the two labels that if you only pay attention to a few will make an enormous impact on your health and weight loss journey. Let's get started.

[00:02:28] Number of servings. Ironically the first and most important thing I want you to pay attention to is not a nutritional stat. It's something even simpler and easier. In fact you don't need to know anything about nutrition to make sense of this number.

[00:02:42] I want you to always check the number of servings in a package. This is crucial because some foods sound great per serving but they have a very small serving size. So if the pretzels are 100 calories per serving but one serving is six small pretzels

[00:03:00] the greater likelihood is that you're going to eat more than six pretzels unless you take specific steps to prevent it. One pound of pasta for example equals eight servings. If you have four people in your family and you eat the whole pound of pasta

[00:03:15] in one sitting between the four of you you just double the serving size whether the pasta is gluten free, whole wheat, organic or whatever. So if the serving size provided 200 calories of pasta you actually ate 400 calories of pasta. If your goal is fat loss eating 400 calories of pasta

[00:03:35] when you think you're eating 200 is going to make your fat loss journey difficult and frustrating. Serving size is incredibly important. A good strategy is to divide food into the appropriate number of serving sizes as prescribed by the package before you start serving and eyeballing portions.

[00:03:53] It's a tiny bit of effort that pays rich dividends. It's why clients are often baffled that I eat pasta, bread, pizza and lots of other foods. I can do this on a regular basis and still be lean because of the proper division of the serving sizes.

[00:04:09] Grams of sugar versus grams of protein. In general I'm not anti-sugar. I have a sweet tooth and enjoy the richness of real sugar when I want to have a treat. But, and this is a big caveat, it's important to distinguish whether you are knowingly eating a dessert

[00:04:25] or you think you're doing something nutritionally virtuous. It's often that gap in perception that results in slow or non-existent results. Yogurt is a great example. There's a huge difference between eating a non-fat, plain, Chabani yogurt as part of your fitness plan,

[00:04:40] one container being 14 grams of protein and only 4 grams of lactose sugar and having a dessert yogurt like the Chabani flip top which clocks in at 12 grams of protein but 20 grams of sugar and double the calories too. When evaluating foods like snacks and yogurts,

[00:04:58] the protein sugar ratio can be extremely helpful in deciding which products to make part of your regular routine and which products to make treats every once in a while. My general rule of thumb? To make it into my daily routine,

[00:05:11] a food has to have more than 10 grams of protein and less than 10 grams of sugar and the higher the protein the better. The more protein a food contains, the more it will satisfy you resulting in fewer cravings later. Labels to ignore.

[00:05:27] In general, if you simply pay attention to the number of serving sizes and the protein sugar ratio in the context of a diet that's rich in fruits and vegetables, you're going to be fine.

[00:05:37] When it comes to other labels, especially the ones that are prominently plastered on the front of the box or container, remember that this is marketing and not always in your best interests. Use your judgment. Is the label organic on a box of a sweet treat?

[00:05:53] If eating organic is very important to you and you were going to buy this sweet treat for your house anyway, that's one thing. But don't let labels like organic or high protein in quotes because it often isn't. Gluten-free, sugar-free, cholesterol-free or dairy-free

[00:06:10] persuade you into buying something under the illusion that it is going to make a difference for your fat loss or health goals because it probably isn't. The benefits of something being organic or gluten-free are often outweighed by the amount of sugar, fat and refined carbohydrates in the product.

[00:06:26] Here's another good rule of thumb. If you wouldn't have bought the regular version with a feeling of nutritional virtue, don't buy the organic or gluten-free version either. And even though I think it's overly reductionist, the cliche about the best foods don't need a nutrition label often holds true.

[00:06:43] Foods like apples, spinach, carrots, celery, blueberries, peppers and others are not labeled because the distributor does not have to worry about offsetting the perceived sinfulness of the food. Apples don't have a perception problem. You don't have to plaster a gluten-free or cholesterol-free label on a bag of onions.

[00:07:04] When it comes to many labels, you can choose which ones are important to you, your health and your value system. But when a label is dressing up a food that is low in protein and high in sugar and high in calories relative to the container,

[00:07:18] you might just want to take a pass. In the end, you'll see results faster, as well as experience higher levels of energy and more satisfaction from the food you do eat and enjoy. By the way, what about those cholesterol-free cookies?

[00:07:32] My client is very smart and did not buy them. Good job! You just listened to the post titled Which Food Labels Should I Really Read by Rachel Trotta of racheltrotta.com Dr. Neal here for my commentary.

[00:07:51] I discuss nutrition labels in all of the introductory nutrition classes I teach. And like today's author, Rachel, I don't spend a whole lot of time explaining every single detail of the nutrition facts label. Instead, I give them shortcuts.

[00:08:05] They're going to learn all about those details in their other classes and that's because they're going into this field they need to be nutrition experts. But instead, in the beginning, I focus on the most important things. And here are the things I tell them to pay attention to.

[00:08:19] See if any of these sound familiar based on what Rachel mentioned in her post. Serving size, calories, types of fat, fiber and sugar. Now why sugar? Well, let me be more specific. I make them look at added sugars. That's because in the US,

[00:08:36] the Food and Drug Administration is now requiring large food manufacturers to have a separate line that shows us how many grams of added sugars there are versus just total grams of sugar. This is because natural sugars like those found naturally in fruit

[00:08:51] or naturally found in yogurt because of the lactose for example may be processed differently by the body when compared to added sugars like high fructose corn syrup. The same goes for fat. Not all fats are bad.

[00:09:03] So it's important to look at the types of fat found in foods, not just total grams of fat. Now fiber is something most of us don't consume enough of each day. When shopping for breads, pasta, cereals and other grains,

[00:09:16] I say aim for at least 3 grams of dietary fiber per serving. So if you use Rachel's tips as well as the ones I just provided, you're going to be off to a fantastic start. You're going to make label reading so much simpler for yourself.

[00:09:29] And like Rachel said, ignore some of the misleading marketing on the product's packaging. That's just trying to get you to buy their product and it may or may not be super accurate. Alright that wraps up today's episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:09:42] Thank you for being a subscriber of the show. I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you back here tomorrow for another Q&A episode and where your optimal life awaits.