Do You Know What You Just Ate - Learn To Read Food Labels

I remember a couple of months ago, I watched a tv show and they touched on the topic of learning how to read your food label. It hit me as I was sitting on my couch that this was something I didn't do when I go to the grocery store, for the most part I just buy the food I am accustomed to buying and I dash out. I have since found out how vital reading the label is. It really gives you a sense of being in control about what foods you are putting into your stomach, especially if the goal is to eat healthily.

It is important to know what foods you are letting pass into your stomach, as labels can help you if you are allergic to certain things. Not only will reading the label give you an idea of how much of the food you are supposed to consume per serving, it will also tell you how good or bad that specific food is to you. So how do you read food labels and what does the information on them mean?

Food labels show you factual information about what nutrients are in the item, and how much of that nutrient is in the item. The label will have information on the serving size, total fat, energy which will be in calories, sodium content which is your salt content and it will have a list of the other ingredients added into the item.

Here are the things you need to pay attention to:

1. Serving size - this gives you an idea of the amount of food a person is supposed to consume, which may not necessarily reflect how much of that food item you are going to consume. The important thing about serving size is that it will give you an idea of the amount of nutrients that you will consume.

An example of this is when you buy a candy bar and the serving size is 100g  but  the candy bar is actually 200g in weight. If you were to consume the whole candy bar, the nutrients that enter your body would be double of the nutrients that are reflected on the label. For you to get the exact nutrient per serving as reflected on the label would be if you consumed half the candy bar.

2. Nutrients - this is just the list of available nutrients in the food. The