Last week I had the pleasure of doing a grocery store tour with a client. I love doing these tours! It’s nice to chat in person (I do everything else for my practice virtually) and get our hands on actual food. Plus I love going to the grocery store. If I could live at Wegmans, I would.
I give food label education in my program to clients during our video calls, and I like reinforcing what we talk about in person during the tours. It’s a good way for me to show them different nutrient compositions of different things, and compare brands or different versions of things. Think looking at the fiber content of similar cereals, the fat content of different dairy products or the sodium in different types or brands of canned soups.
Speaking of fiber, fat and sodium – actually we will get back to that in a minute.
I pay attention to those a lot on labels. But there is something I almost never look at. Even when I go over food label education I don’t spend too much time talking about this number. That number, friend, is *calories*.
You might be saying, “What?! Wendy, how do I know if something is healthy unless I know how many calories it contains?” And my answer would be that as a dietitian the number that means the absolute least to me is calories.
I have two main reasons for this. Reason #1 is that it doesn’t tell you a damn thing about the healthfulness of a food. Those calories could come from anywhere. You could eat a 200 calorie whole food snack of a protein and carbohydrate or a 200 calorie snack of Lucky Charms. They are not equal. The calories alone don’t tell me where they came from or what else is going on.
Reason #2 is that there is no context. When you’re looking at something that you might think is higher in calories, let’s say over 300 for a serving, you’re going to say, “oh man that’s too much!” But, how is it too much? You likely are eating more than 6x that amount every day so that doesn’t seem like a big portion of your total. Maybe you’re eating more than that or less but the point is that you’re looking at one single food when we don’t eat that way! You’re looking at it out of context.
So if we aren’t paying attention to calories, what are we paying attention to instead?
Fiber: I am such a fiber nerd. It is one of the best things we can put into our bodies. It helps bulk stool (you want this to happen), it helps draw water to stool (so it doesn’t hurt), it draws excess cholesterol out of your blood (you want this to happen) and it feeds the microbiome living in your gut which plays a role in the health of just about every other bodily system.
Be careful with added fibers though. You will probably find this in your Quest bar or other food that wouldn’t have a high amount of naturally occurring fiber. These will be things like inulin, soluble corn fiber, acacia, beta-glucan soluble fiber, psyllium husk, cellulose, guar gum, pectin, locust bean gum. There isn’t anything inherently harmful about these, but they might cause GI discomfort especially when eaten in large amounts. In terms of processing, you can make that call yourself!
Saturated fat: I’m tempted to say total fat here, but truthfully saturated fat is the one I look out for. Saturated fat has known detrimental effects on health, particularly heart health which can lead to things like high blood pressure or heart conditions. Basically, your body has a tough enough time digesting fat as it is and saturated fat can get stuck as it moves through your system. I like to point this out in packaged foods and dairy mostly.
Sodium: when I was in school for nutrition, one of my professors said that the high blood pressure we see in patients caused by eating too much sodium in the diet is not from the salt shaker. Salting food for seasoning is likely not going to put you in hot water. But since sodium is a preservative, it’s used in a lot of food that is frozen or comes in boxes or packages. Canned soup and frozen meals are notorious for this. I’d be aware of basically anything you put in a microwave!
So back to calories – something could be higher than I’d want in sodium and saturated fat but have less calories than something that’s low in sodium and saturated fat but higher in fiber. See how we need context?
Hit me up with other label questions you might have! I’m always happy to chat 🙂