Revised Food Labels
May 21st, 2016A story in the New York Times, titled “F.D.A. finishes food labels for how we eat now” describes how all food manufacturers will be required to put a new food information label on their products. This new label highlights the calories in a larger bold font. It also lists the number of servings per container more prominently at the top of the label.
I think these two changes are really going to help people make healthier food choices. From my own experience, I find the current food labels quite misleading. Just the other day, I looked a the label for an individually wrapped single cookie (about 3 inches in diameter) at a local coffee shop. It said the servings per container was 4, and the calories per serving was 120. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone splitting a single cookie into fourths! However, if you glanced quickly at the label, you would assume the whole cookie was 120 calories, rather than the actual 480 calories! I have also seen food products labeling the serving size with amounts like “3 Oz.” which unless you’re a nutritionist may not be relevant to your concept of portion size. Not coincidentally, these deceptive serving sizes usually appear on “unhealthy” foods as a way to make you think you are eating a low calorie item.
For the average person with a 2000 calorie per day budget, the goal is to keep snacks at below 150 calories per serving. The snack should also have low amounts of saturated fat, cholesterol and no trans fat. Reading food labels and comparing them when you go shopping is very important to maintaining good health. I’m quite pleased at the efforts of the FDA to keep people informed about what is in their food. I think for their next step, they should consider requiring nutrition labels to be placed on alcoholic beverages. In my practice, I have seen several patients who eat relatively healthy but they pack on the weight due to the calories from ingested alcohol. Beer is the classic example. While some beers are below 100 calories, others can be as high as 350 calories (especially for the India Pale Ales, which are quite trendy right now). To put that into perspective, a can of soda is about 140-160 calories. While the beer does not taste sweet, it contains calories from the carbohydrate content and alcohol. Imagine if you had 2 of these beers, that would be an additional 700 calories! With a 2000 calorie budget per day, that would be almost what you should get from a single meal! Currently, there are few sites that have calories for alcohol and spirits. I recommend Myfitnesspal.com as they have a very extensive list of foods and beverages where you can even find specific types. For example, if you are looking for a certain brand of yogurt, it has the brand and even the specific flavor. You can also track your calories with the App for your smartphone.
