Changing your body composition and getting the quality results come down to exercising and eating a healthy diet. The farther you get into training, the more important a healthy diet’s role becomes. In order to eat properly, you have to know how to read a food label. The food label tells us exactly what we are getting from our food and that’s good to know when your designing a new way of eating.
As you can see in the image, a food label tells you how much of each nutrient is in what you’re going to eat. Always pay attention to the serving size before anything else. Just because the food says 1g of saturated fat doesn’t mean its healthy. The serving size could only be a cracker. The servings per container are also included to let you compare what you actually eat with the serving size on that product. Of course, looking at the total calories per serving is important.
The right hand column has the % Daily Value. This number gives you an idea of how much 1 serving contributes to a 2000 calorie diet. You can use the %DV to determine if the food is a good source of a nutrient.
Not all nutrients are listed on the food labels. The most important to everyday life are listed. It also lists nutrients people get too much of like cholesterol, sodium, and saturated fat. These numbers are good to pay attention to as well. And of course, the nutrients people never get enough of are listed as well. These include things like fiber, calcium, Vitamin A, and iron. You should try and get 100% of each nutrient throughout a day.
And thats how to read a food label. Simple, right.
Travis
