by Stuart Leopold

Created on: October 11, 2008   Last Updated: November 27, 2011

Most people never read the nutritional label on the back of food packages. Why, you ask, because for most folks once they read the calories listed, they assume they've mined all of the pertinent information from the label.

The nutritional label, if interpreted properly, can and will be a road map for  consumers to plan their healthy eating journeys. Once you get familiar with the various parts of the label you will begin to understand exactly what you are ingesting and how it will affect your weight-loss plans and your general dietary regimen.

Look at the serving size and the amount of servings in the package. This will give you the proper perspective of just how many calories you are taking in. Most people simply look at the amount of calories, but don't relate it to the serving size and/or the amount of calories for the box. Truth be told, most consumers don't want to really know how many calories they are consuming. Sometimes "calorie reality" is not part of our real diet plans. It's easy to see what we want to see when we're hungry. Even the box looks good!

If consumers look just at the calories they figure (incorrectly so) that if they eat the stateed contents of the box that they will be taking in 250 calories. In reality they are taking in 500 calories as the package contains 2 servings. It's easy to pull the calorie blinders over our dieting eyes if we want to. If someone is on a 1,000 calorie diet, then they are consuming 50% of their total day's calories in one sitting. Oops!

Next we want to look at the percentage of Fat Calories to total calories. The general rule of thumb is you don't want your calories from fat to be more than 25-30% of the total. If you look at the label and half, or more, of the calories are from fat, don't eat it.

All of us must look at the label differently. Some folks, because of cardiac problems, have to be aware of the amount of cholesterol and sodium (salt) they take in. Often times, salt is used both as a preservative and to make the foods taste better. There's lots of ways to make the food we eat taste better. Stuffing it with salt isn't the best way. It wouldn't be out of the question to buy foods low in salt and seasoning them before cooking with herbs and spices. You want to eat foods low in cholesterol as well. If you are carb-counting then you need to take note of that. Sugar is another ingredient we should take seriously. Sometimes the sugar content of foods is natural sugars that are released from the food itself. This is better than consuming sugar that the manufacturer has added to the food.

Don't stop reading the label at the top half. Look at the Ingredients to see what is actually in the food on your plate. If sugar or high fructose corn syrup is in the first four ingredients, you probably don't want to eat it. Added sugars turn to fat very quickly. That defeats the purpose of going on a nutritional program to lose weight if the major ingredient you eat is a major fat-producing aspect of the food.

Because so many people have become more aware of the foods they eat, there is a plethora of fresh and prepared organic foods in supermarkets that offer a healthy alternative to the run-of the-mill prepared foods.

Embarking on a weight-reduction program and becoming a well-informed consumer at the same time, is very much a common sense thing. Be aware, be critical and be healthy.

Learn more about this author, Stuart Leopold.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.