Hi!

I just read this article on yahoo and found it interesting. This is the link:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060702/...me/food_labels


So, do you read labels? And do you buy the food if the nutritional information tells you not to?

Personally, I always look at the calories and try not to buy those foods high in calories and fat, but sometimes I still buy the bad foods. Like I know M&M's are bad to begin with, the nutrition facts confirm it, yet I still buy it if I crave it.

Also, do you find it confussing when they list the calories per serving rather than the whole package?

Luci

i dont. couldnt give a shit really. but in my defense, i rarely buy packaged food.

I always check labels. always always always.

I'll usually just wander around Food Emporium for ages, checking the nutritional information on everything. but I wind up not buying anything because everything's too high in calories. Sigh.

yeah it can be a bit annoying, i usually figure out how many servings there are in the whole package and calculate the calories from that. a bit annoying but easy enough to do.

Of course. The lower in cals/fat/sugar the more of it I can eat.

yes, but i can't say that i may much attention to them other than the ingredients and the vitamin info.

I check labels, but I don't always have a good idea of what the numbers mean. Like, recently I was advised by my doctor to cut down on salt, because my blood pressure isn't looking good. I don't salt my food or anything - my real eating problem is sweeties, but high blood pressure runs in the family - so there isn't any extremely obvious way to cut down the way there would be if she'd told me to stay off the candy (which, she pretty much did also, since she said I needed to lose weight). So I'm looking at the sodium content on labels, and I realize I don't really know what's high/low/normal, unless it's the 'low-sodium' version of something.

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yes, always. especially before i know i'm about to go to a fast food resturant! I look up all the nutrition facts online.

I pretty much read the labels of everything I buy. I usually just check calories and fiber, as those are most important to me.

I think that's one of those scenarios where, rather than just picking stuff up on the basis of how much salt it has, you want to plan all your meals for a day and ensure that they are no higher than the guidelines for acceptable salt intake. Kinda like how, if you're dieting, you'd want to calculate how many calories you're going to get in what you plan to eat that day, taking into consideration your portion sizes. So you could afford to have the odd high-salt item if you really fancied it, as long as you made sure everything else you ate was really low in it. Just like how people dieting can allow themselves treats within reason. I think it'd probably involve a bit of trial and error, as far as buying food is concerned. You'll surely get a feel for it after a while.

I tend not to read labels too much actually. I have no real idea of the levels of salt/fibre/sugar I'm taking in. It's a very difficult thing to truly comprehend without going about it all meticulously, weighing your food and knowing what the guidelines are for nutrition.

The trouble with nutritional info is that they do like to confuse matters by showing things 'per portion'. Here in the UK, food (and all drinks other than alcoholic ones, I think) must have the bare minimum of 'per 100g' or 'per 100ml'. That's useful for in-shop comparison purposes, but not so useful when actually considering what you're taking in. The main example I can think of is cereal. A box of cereal will have nutritional figures for a portion, which is X grams with Y mls of semi-skimmed milk. I've never actually weighed and measured my cereal and milk when preparing a bowl, but I'd be willing to bet that the portion size that I and most people have is far bigger than that stated on the box. And the cereal manufacturers (and really any food manufacturers) are at liberty to use any portion size examples they want on the packaging. The question is: how does it translate into reality? Without scales in my kitchen, it's almost impossible to tell and that's essentially why I don't bother looking too deeply into what is on the label.

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Deux hommes font une promenade amicale. L'un des deux porte un parapluie à son bras.
Il se met à pleuvoir. L'homme n'ouvre pas son parapluie et l'autre lui demande pourquoi.
- Parce que ça ne servirait à rien, lui répond son ami. Il est plein de trous.
- Alors, pourquoi l'as-tu pris?
- Parce que je ne pensais pas qu'il pleuvrait.

Yeah, I know, I just can't get up the energy for all that. It's hot and nasty - I actually could barely eat for practically a week, and I was thinking 'I should be figuring out what nutrients I need and forcing just that into myself,' but the same things making me not hungry made me not up to doing that either.

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Hey Lisa. There is a link I posted in another thread that might be of use: http://www.sparkpeople.com/

It lets you set our a diet/fitness nutrition plan based on what you want to lose and how much you work out and whatnot. The diet part of it allows you to track your food and you can choose what nutrients you want to track (other than fat, cals and sugar). It might simplify the whole planning process for you.

Thanks, I think I did see that, and meant to get around to trying, but haven't yet. The heat just kills me, and we also can't have the computer and the a/c on at the same time at home (no, I can't explain why I can converse at length about my childhood memories and political theories online from work, but not do something like that, but if you're looking IT department, I love you! Please don't bust me!! I'll buy you ice cream!). I think I'm going to actually have to ask my boss to leave early for my follow-up appointment, even though its after work hours, because I overheat so easily, and take so long to cool down, I don't know how else to get an accurate bp without sitting quietly in air conditioning for half an hour after the subway ride.

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I always check labels to see the ingrediants. I'm vegetarian and I'm always checking for animal products in food. I always check the nutritional information but in some cases [and not very often] you just crave bad food.