The Extension Connection
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The Extension Connection
Understanding Food Labeling
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In this episode, we will explore the food label and learn how to interpret the information found on both the front and back of food packages. We will also define common nutrition claims such as "fat-free," "low sugar," and other labeling terms to help you better understand what they mean. Join us as we break down the food label and discover how understanding nutrition information can help you make healthier, more informed food choices.
Resources:
Resources: https://burke.ces.ncsu.edu/food-standards-certification-labeling-video-series/
https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/blog/organic-101-what-usda-organic-label-means
https://ncefnep.org/reading-nutrition-facts-labels/
Welcome back to the Extension Connection podcast, where we connect our listeners to research-based resources to help them build better lives. Hey, everyone. This is Lindsey Edwards, your Family and Consumer Science Extension agent in Polk County, and today I want to dive into the topic that I think everyone can use in their lives, and that is understanding food labels. At some point, we all have to deal with purchasing or receiving food, and how food is labeled is something that we should all be able to understand. Food labels can help you understand what you're eating to hopefully help you to eat healthier and make better decisions towards the foods that you are bringing into your home and into your bodies. In this podcast, I wanna cover the front of the food label, some of the marketing claims and what they mean, as well as some of the things on the back of the food label and how to decipher a nutrition label. So starting on the front of the label. Usually, the front of the label has the name of the product. A lot of the marketing information that hopefully will catch your attention to make you wanna purchase that product, and then it also has some common things, or it sometimes can have some common things on it. This is where a lot of people will look for things like organic. When you're looking for something labeled organic, just know that the USDA organic certification can be used for produce and meat products as long as it has been certified by the USDA. Organic means that they cannot use synthetic pesticides, cannot use GMO growth hormones, antibiotics, and sewage sludge. They must also promote soil health and biodiversity and animal welfare. They must be considered at least 95% organic to get the certification and be inspected annually. They can still use pesticides and fertilizers. They just have to be from an approved list that is on the USDA website, and I will attach it here in the show notes as well. You'll also see things that'll say 70% organically produced ingredients, and what that means is that they are not using all organic ingredients you'll also see things like all-natural. It does not have a formal definition, but the FDA does have a policy, and I'm gonna read to you what it states. "The FDA has considered the term natural to mean nothing artificial or synthetic, including all colors, additives, regardless of source, has been included in or has been added to a food that would not normally be expected to be in that food. However, this policy was not intended to address food production methods such as the use of pesticides, nor did it explicitly address food processing or manufacturing methods such as thermal technologies,-" Or pasteurization. The term natural is more of a marketing term because it's not actually verified by a third party, so be careful when designing on a product due to this term. GMO labeling is another term that you'll see. The Agricultural Marketing Service developed the list of bioengineered foods to identify the crops of foods that are available in bioengineered form throughout the world and for which regulated entities must maintain records. These records will inform regulated entities about whether they must make a bioengineered food disclosure. There's a list of these foods, and again, I can attach them in the show notes for you 'cause it's a pretty long list, and I don't wanna read through it on here and bore anyone On packages it'll say, "bioengineered food" or "contains a bioengineered food ingredient" if it does have one of those foods. The FDA has proposed that a front of the package nutrition label fact be added, but right now that's still just a proposed rule and something that has not been approved. But what that would look like is that there would have some more nutrition information on the front of the package, so you wouldn't have to pick it up and turn it over. Nutrition claims right now that are on the front of the package are things like low calorie, reduced calorie, sugar-free, no sugar added, low sodium. But a lot of people don't know what those are actually defined as, so I'm just gonna give you a few of these, and again, I can list them all in the show notes. But something that says low calorie means that it's 40 calories or less. Sugar-free means less than .5 grams of sugar per serving and no ingredient that is sugar or generally understood to contain sugar. So there's a lot of different names for sugar in the ingredients list, so just be aware of that. Reduced sugar is very similar to reduced calories, so at least 25% less sugar than the regular product. And no sugar added means no sugar or sugar-containing ingredient added during processing or packaging. Sodium's another thing that you might see on the front of the label. There is a lot of sodium claims, I'm just gonna read you two or three of these. Sodium-free means less than five milligrams of sodium and no ingredient that is sodium chloride or that contains sodium. Low sodium means 140 milligrams or less, and then something that is no salt added means just that, no salt is added during processing. Fat. So fat, you'll see fat-free, low fat, reduced fat. What do these mean? Just like sugar-free, fat-free means the same thing, less than .5 grams of fat per serving. Low fat is three grams of fat or less per serving, and reduced fat means at least 25% less than the regular product If something says good source of, it means that it contains 10 to 19% of your daily value. So whether that be a vitamin, mineral, nutrient, whatever it is, that's what it means there. If it says high or excellent source of, it contains 20% or more of the daily value. Okay, two of the words that I get a lot of questions about are fortified and enriched. Fortified foods mean that they're adding in nutrients that weren't originally found in there, and then enriched foods means that they were lost during processing and they're putting them back in there. Vitamin D is a good example of a fortified food. Vitamin D is not naturally found in milk, but they put vitamin D in there in order for you to be able to absorb calcium. The difference between that and enriched, you'll see enriched a lot of times on bread products because when they do the processing of bread, they can lose some of the nutrients that the wheat or the grain had originally. They will put that back into the food. Again, you will see those two terms a lot. Okay. There's a lot of marketing terms out there. The way they color the bag, the way they label things can make you wanna buy it or make you feel a certain way or think a certain thing. But actually turning that label over and examining the ingredients and also your nutritional facts label is a really good idea to see if the food is where you want it to be nutritionally. On the back of the label, you have some key elements to your nutrition facts label. You have things like serving size, calories, total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, sugars, dietary fiber, protein, and vitamins and minerals. Looking at that, your serving size is gonna be at your top. That is where you look at how much of the product you should be consuming as a serving. Sometimes you'll get a product and it will say calories per serving and calories per whole container because most people might eat the whole container or drink the whole container of whatever it is. Keep that in mind. Always look at your serving sizes. Percentage daily value tells you how much of a certain nutrient you're gonna get. If the product says "This contains 10% of your daily value of fat," this means for a 2,000-calorie diet, this would be 10% of what you should be eating in a day In general, you want to aim for lower percentage daily values of the following things, okay? These wanna be on the low side: saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, and added sugar. You want five percent, look for five percent or less. Aim for a high percentage of daily value, twenty percent or more of things like vitamins, minerals, and fiber. It's also helpful to remember that the ingredients on the bottom of the food label are listed in order. When you look at the ingredients label the ingredients that are labeled first have the most of that item, and as they go down, has the least of that item. They are labeled in order from most to least. Now, another thing I wanna point out on the nutrition label itself, something that has changed within the last ten years, are your sugars, because this is often something that people are very worried about is natural sugar versus added sugar in a product. When you're looking at this, you will see it'll say, "Total sugars," and then underneath that it'll say, "Added sugars." The added sugars, again, is a new thing that they have put on product labels, and what that is telling you is the sugar that is being added to that product, right? If you had a nutrition label for an apple, Just an apple that you buy in the grocery store, a whole apple. It would have a total sugar number, but it would not have an added sugar number because they have not added any sugar to that. But if I get an applesauce that has sugar added, I will have a total amount that has the natural sugars plus the added sugars now that they've added in there. Keep that in mind. We do want to try to keep our added sugars down, so lower those added sugars, eat more of those natural sugars. Keep our dietary fiber high. Keep those vitamins and minerals high. Avoid trans fats. Keep our saturated fat lower than ten percent of our daily calories, and just ensuring that we're overall eating a healthy diet. Now, with the nutrition label and with the front and the back of any kind of package label, there's so much to look at, so I will be attaching some information in the show notes if you wanna do a deeper dive into how they do marketing or how they do labeling or how they do all the things on the food label. I'll leave that there. I wanna thank you for listening to today's podcast, and I hope that this has been helpful, and I look forward to talking to you next month on the Extension Connection Podcast.