The Tales and Fables of Nutrition Labels!

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*Dunh duh duh* *Dunh duh duh* - of course this signifies scary music *Hear scream in the background* We are covering the scary world of nutrition labels. Have you taken the time to read even one of these lately? The food that we carelessly throw into our carts as staples of our everyday diet is scary stuff!!! Sure, you may know to glance at the calories, but are you applying basic math to multiply the servings? Pizza, bag of chips, and Ben and Jerry's not meant for one consumer? No way! WAY, my friend, or should I say WEIGH!!! Even the "healthy" stuff, not so healthy. As I am trying to discover a healthier lifestyle I am trying to make more conscious choices of what I eat as fuel. (Not that I needed the Label to tell me I haven't been eating so well.) Some of these labels you need to understand chemistry and I am proud to announce I didn't study that in high school. I did take Physics and do understand by eating junk food, my acceleration is low as I got a lot of gravity working against me :) So moving on. These unpronounceable ingredients don't exist in Nature. Or worse they do but have to be covered up by an 18 letter word. Not good signs people! A nutritional tidbit I have heard is that if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it! And the longer the ingredient list the farther away the product is from it's natural whole food state. Here are some of my findings while casually scanning the nutrition labels. My big holy batman moment ( I went with this saying because if you remembered the batman tv show when they would fight the bad guys the expressions Pow! Bam! Ka-boom! would appear and that's what I am picturing) was picking up a can of Hearty Tomato Soup. A Healthy go to lunch or a dinner alternative for those nights you don't want to have think or prepare anything. I'll fess up I would probably eat a whole can of tomato soup with a grilled cheese and call that a yummy almost healthful supper. Let's check the label and see what we find. Well the calories are great as eating the whole can would equal only 120 calories. Great! Fat grams equal the big zero. Healthy so far. Wait, Sodium percentage? That can't be right. There are two servings in this can of soup. And one serving equals forty percent of the recommended amount for the day?!?!?! So two servings equal eighty percent!!!! That's crazy people. This is how we easily consume on average twice the recommended amount every day! Unto our next label - what do I see in the ingredient list? Anchovies are in worcestershire sauce. I had no idea that fish were in a typical condiment. For some reason that blew my mind! What else would I discover as I donned my Sherlock Holmes duds? That "Light" added to a label is only in comparison to its own product line. Peanuts and milk could be in almost any product it seems as warnings were present everywhere. That there is quite the legend on many packages after warning (vegan, not vegan, K for kosher, no msg, etc) That Natural Flavors appears at the end of lists quite often without narrowing the subject down (couldn't almost anything be considered a natural flavor? ) Why are minerals being added to semi-healthy choices. Do you need (or want) calcium added to orange juice or applesauce? Speaking of applesauce I am not a gourmet chef, but I am confused to why is there more than two possibly three ingredients for apple sauce. To me all you need is apples and water maybe a spice (along the lines of cinnamon). I picked up five different brands of apple sauce and not one had a list of ingredients shorter than six ingredients. WHAT?!?! I also felt a company wasn't completely telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth when I picked up a raisins pack and only one ingredient was listed. Do you know what that one ingredient was? Raisins! Do raisins exist without processessing? No, because they start as grapes! With that theory Cake Mix could list cake mix as its only ingredient and be telling the truth. But we want more information. So raisins fess up. Share your journey so the public will be informed. This concludes the Tales and Fables of Nutrition Labels. Beware consumers of what you consume and for your health please Be AWARE!!! Tomorrow we'll chat about Phasing out the Bad by Welcoming the Good :)