What Nutrition Labels Don't Tell You

Ever picked up your favorite food, turned it over to look at the label and wondered what the heck is going on?

You’re not alone.

Food labeling can be seriously confusing. With so much information on food boxes and bags (and in such small print, too!), that can of tinned tomatoes or box of oatmeal looks more like a mathematician’s notebook than something you’re going to eat.

We've all heard of those secret unhealthy foods. You know the ones; they are made to appear like they should be a healthy part of your diet, but putting them in your basket and making them disappear down your throat can actually wreck your progress. Common offenders include fruit juice and smoothies, diet cereals, low-fat salad dressings, meat replacement products and cereal or snack bars. Look at any of the packaging though, and any of the nasty ingredients in there are pushed to one side, to be replaced with huge slogans and graphics of how this food will help you out.

Whether your goal is to lose fat, gain muscle, or just increase your general health and well-being and your awareness of what you are actually eating, you need to know what’s in your food. Simply grabbing a bunch of stuff off the shelf, throwing it in your basket and hoping for the best isn't good enough.

Before looking at what you’re not being told, let’s take a look at what the nutrition labels do say:

Calories

Probably the most important factor in deciding whether you eat a food or not is the calorie content. Calorie counts on labels are generally fairly accurate and usually at the top of the information list. You’ll usually be given a calorie amount per serving and per 100 grams. (One serving does not mean the entire package, pretty much no matter what you're looking at.)

Macronutrients

Macronutrients are proteins, carbs and fats. Like calories, they’ll be fairly prominent and listed in grams. Most foods will again give values per serving and per 100 grams.

Micronutrients

These are your vitamins and minerals. You won’t get an exhaustive list, but will be able to see the main ones in the food you're considering buying. As the amounts are so small, it’s not unusual to see them listed as a percentage of your GDA (guidelines daily allowance.)

Ingredients

These have to be on the packaging, along with any ingredients or information on additives that can trigger common allergies or reactions, such as soy, nuts or gluten. Ingredients are listed in order of amount, so if it's at the bottom of the list, that ingredient is hardy in there at all.

Servings

For things like cereals, cakes, pies, yogurts, and so on – basically any larger items that are bigger than single-servings, there’s a suggested serving size per person and a total number of servings for the whole product. This can be extremely deceiving however, but there’s more on this a little later.

From all this, it seems that the food manufacturers are pretty much on point, and looking to give you as much information as possible, but consumer beware.

What’s Hidden Behind the Labels

Calories? Check.
Macronutrients? Yup.
Micronutrients? Sure.
GDA percentages? Ditto.

So what’s missing?

Individualization

The very idea of giving you the percentages of your daily calorie and macronutrient needs is absurd.

The main trouble with this is that it’s hugely generalized. Every body is different, and needs a different calorie intake depending on goals, age, weight, gender, activity levels, training schedule and metabolism.

The average recommended daily calorie intakes set by the United States Department of Agriculture are 2,000 for women and 2,500 for men. But these take none of the above factors into the consideration.

If you’re a 200 pound male bodybuilder looking to gain muscle, eating 2,500 calories per day will do you about as much good as a chocolate kettle. Likewise, if you’re a very light female, weighing only 120 pounds or so, but looking to get a bit leaner, eating 2,000 calories per day will likely lead to significant fat gain.

The same goes for the percentage values for the macronutrients and micronutrients – they’re all based on the recommendations for the average person, and more or less redundant for anyone not of average weight, training hard, or with a physique-based goal.

Amounts of Ingredients

Some products will list percentages or amounts of every ingredient used. Most, however simply give a percentage of the largest ingredient, then list all minor ingredients below. If you’re tying to limit certain foods, this really doesn't help you out much at all.

Serving Sizes

Grab a box of dieting cereals and it’ll tell you that a serving has only x many calories and a minuscule y grams of fat per serving.

“Great,” you might think, but have you ever actually weighed out a serving? Most cereals like this advise eating around 1 ounce or 30 grams at a time. So put your bowl on the scales and pour out what you’d deem a serving to be.

Yup, they might give you the correct amounts per serving, but what they don’t tell you is how tiny a serving should actually be. If you've not been weighing your food before, say hello to the realization you've been eating around twice as many calories as you though you had. (Hint: if that cereal "serving size" doesn't actually satisfy you, you could consider having a protein rich breakfast instead.)

Protein

I said earlier that products list all the macronutrients, and while the vast majority do, this isn't uniform.

Companies often prioritize advertising how low their product is in carbs, fat, sugar or calories to draw you in, yet don’t even bother to mention the protein content.

The issue with this is that the average person in the Western world has a diet grossly deficient in protein. Protein helps to build and repair muscle mass and is more metabolically active than fats or carbs, so aids with weight loss, yet it’s deemed a third class citizen in the macronutrient hierarchy.

You want to eat lots of protein-packed foods to increase satiety, but if you don’t know what foods contain protein or how much, how will you manage that?

Trans Fats

Trans fats are pretty much the dietary devils. Apart from the odd naturally occurring trans fat (such as CLA, found in grass-fed meat and dairy products) they have absolutely no health benefits and can have many negative side effects.

Many labels don’t list trans fats, or if they do, they’re sneaky about it. Under government guidelines, if a food only has a small amount of trans fat, it doesn't need to be listed. This might not be an issue initially, but if all your favorite foods contain small amounts, that can soon add up and start affecting your health.

The take home point here is to use labels as a guide, but you’re far better off reading up on nutrition and educating yourself on making better choices without having to rely on labels.