Kspitz’s Weblog

As a nutrition teacher I find food labels to be a mixed blessing. They are informative, yet they can also be confusing and misleading.

During a recent visit to my local grocery store, I was reading the ingredients on one of those new-fangled yogurt smoothies when the woman next to me said, “I finally convinced my husband that yogurt is good for him. He loves these things.”

I flinched. I could simply smile and walk away, but being the teacher that I am, I couldn’t do it.  “Well,” I said, “yogurt is good for him, but not this kind.”

“Oh?” she said, “does it have too much sugar? I try to read the labels, but sometimes I just don’t know what to look for.”

We looked at the ingredients on the bottle she had selected. Low-fat milk was listed first; then high fructose corn syrup, then sugar. This 6 oz container of yogurt had 47 grams of sugar. About 10 grams of that sugar is found naturally in the milk, but the rest, roughly 37 grams, is added sugar, pure and simple. There are 5 grams in a teaspoon, so you can picture 7 teaspoons of SUGAR being added to this very small container of yogurt.

“Wow! I guess we don’t need that! But my husband really does like these things,” she lamented.

I reached for the same type of product, but from a different manufacturer. “This one still has added sugar, I said, but not quite as much.”   

“Thank you!” she said, and replaced brand #1 with brand #2.

Not all that much better, I thought as I walked away, but it was not the time or place for my entire lecture on the dangers of eating excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

                When I teach my students how to read food labels, we start by noticing the way the manufacturer tries to sell you the product. What claims are being made, either directly or indirectly? The label on this yogurt says things like “fat-free”, “1/3 fewer calories”, and “best-life approved” – all indicating that it was good for you. But what exactly is “best-life approved”?  1/3 fewer calories than what? This yogurt is also touted as being fat free, which it is, but natural fats are not all bad. They actually help to balance the food equation by slowing down your body’s absorption of sugar.

We then look at the ingredients list. Ingredients must be listed by weight, so you get a pretty clear idea of what a product contains just by reading the first three ingredients. In this yogurt, two of the first three ingredients are sugar. One of these – high fructose corn syrup – is a chemically altered sugar that can confuse the body’s metabolism and interfere with normal satiety cues. This can lead to increased hunger and cravings for more sugar.

The Nutrition Facts label – the numbers on the side or back of the package – will tell you about serving size and the amount of sugar, fat, and fiber in the product. A low sugar product is supposed to have less than 5 grams of sugar per serving – definitely not the case with this yogurt. Finally we put all this information together and try to decide if what the manufacturer has promised is true. The yogurt smoothie, with its 7 teaspoons of added sugar, is actually more like candy than health food.   

I wish all marketing slogans and even health claims were banned from food labels. We would still have to scrutinize ingredients, but the task would be much less confusing. For the time being, I encourage my students – and fellow grocery shoppers – to become food detectives; to look beyond the hype and not be fooled by overzealous advertising. As a food detective, you’re the one who decides what’s best for your life by choosing healthful foods based on the quality of the actual ingredients.