Many of us would love to eat healthier, but part of the challenge is truly understanding nutrition labels at the grocery store.
News 3's Kurt Williams spent some time in his kitchen with Ashley Moody, a registered dietitian from Sentara Healthcare, to find out how not to get overwhelmed when deciding on whether to toss an item into the shopping cart.
Moody says for starters, knowing what to zero in on when looking at nutrition labels is helpful.
"There are a few nutrients that we know we need to limit our intake of because they increase our risk for certain chronic conditions," she said. "One of those will be saturated fats, so you're going to want to look at the saturated fats that the product provides. Another would be sodium and then the other would be added sugars."
Kurt did some shopping to find examples. One juice bottle he showed her had 0 grams of added sugar, but another beverage example, a soft drink featuring cranberry, had 36 grams of added sugar.
"Added sugar is something we're actually interested in limiting on a day-to-day basis. We know Americans tend to get too much added sugar from our diet," Moody explained.
Our next example—a bag of spinach.
Moody then explained the benefits of foods rich in nutrients, like spinach.
"You look down here [you can see some of the nutrients in particular. [Spinach] does offer quite a bit of vitamin A and potassium; there's even some great iron in spinach. In fact, this bag had a considerable amount of potassium, 470 milligrams," Moody said. "So we know that potassium is a nutrient that many Americans are not consuming enough of, so it actually recently has been added to nutrition labels to point out its importance."
She then broke down the nutrition label on a can of beans. She says it was spotlighted for a different reason — the single can contained 500 milligrams of sodium.
"When we look at canned items in particular, sodium is one of the places that I like to zero in," Ashley said. "And we know that an increased intake of added sodium can cause an increased risk of hypertension or heart conditions."
Moody adds that you shouldn't just focus on what to limit when reading labels; be on the lookout for things to increase, like chia seeds.
"So this label is great because it actually calls out the polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fatty acids," she said. "So you can see you're getting seven grams of those good healthy fats that can support our health."
She also sees value in looking for fiber in our label reading.
"So we know that dietary fiber can play a good role in helping with our good cholesterol, and so dietary fiber is also a nutrient we know Americans are not getting enough of," she said.
To recap, Moody is suggesting we don't try to process every nugget on food labels, but focus on the biggies: limiting added sugars, saturated fats, and sodium. She also highlighted the benefits of zeroing in on what we can boost, like fiber and the good fats: polyunsaturated and monounsaturated.
For additional information from Moody and her health and wellness links through Optima Health for prevention and wellness, click here.And for Eating for Life, a program with a variety of resources that can help you boost your health, click here.
