We hear about a new bad-for-you ingredient or must-have superfood practically every day. We might not always leap to change our diets after hearing about them, but one thing is for sure: we've started reading ingredient lists a lot more than we used to. There are a few specific things we make sure to check before buying.
The shopping routine in our house is pretty set, so it's relatively rare that we pick up a new packaged food product. When we do, flipping it over and checking out the ingredients is nearly second-nature. We're mostly looking for:
1. The ingredients listed first - Since the first few ingredients list are also the main ingredients in the product, we want to be sure we recognize what they are and know that we're ok with eating them. If we're looking at whole wheat crackers, whole wheat flour had better be one of those first ingredients!
2. Ingredients ending in "-ose" - This suffix usually indicates some type of sugar, like "dextrose," "fructose," or "maltose."
3. Fats and oils - Here, we're looking at the type of fat (vegetable or otherwise) and whether it's listed as a transfat or partially-hydrogenated.
4. Ingredients we can't pronounce - If we can't pronounce the ingredient, chances are it doesn't occur in nature. Not all of these are necessarily "bad" for us, but they're also probably not doing us much good. And when there are more than one or two of them, a little red flag goes up in our mind.
All of these things add up to give us an idea of what we're getting inside the package. We don't have any allergies or food restrictions, so there aren't many ingredients that make us automatically put the product back on the shelf. Instead, we look at the whole picture and try to weigh the pros and cons of all the factors above.
Whether we ultimately buy the product or not often depends on what we want it for. If it's a one-time treat, we're not as fussy about the amount of sugar or the kind of fat. If it's something that we're thinking of eating every day as a healthy snack, then we get a little more picky.
What do you look for in an ingredient list? How do you decide whether to buy it or not?
Related: Agave Nectar: Healthful or Harmful?
(Image: Flickr member ginnerobot licensed under Creative Commons)
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In the last couple of years, I definitely read labels more than I used to. Especially as I have been having horrible reactions to some products/ingredients.
Things that are listed that make me put the product back on the shelf are:
High Fructose Corn Syrup
High Sodium Levels
High Sugar levels
hydrogenated oils
wheat
saer
http://cravenmaven.wordpress.com
I don't. I mean, I'll look at sugar or calorie content and things like that but I never gave in to the whole idea of being scared of what's in your food.
These days I always check for HFCS, and vastly prefer cane or beet sugar. I don't buy a lot of prepackaged foods, so it's usually in juices or fizzy drinks.
Even though it's probably not the best for your teeth, I love that most Japanese chewing gum is made with cane sugar. It's a rare treat.
As a vegan, I've become a super label reader. But in terms of nutrition, I stay away from stuff like high-fructose corn syrup, lots of wheat or isolated soy stuff, and fake colors.
"If we can't pronounce the ingredient, chances are it doesn't occur in nature. Not all of these are necessarily "bad" for us, but they're also probably not doing us much good."
If you don't know what something is.. or can't pronounce it, LOOK IT UP. Nature didn't *name* the ingredients in your jam or your protein bars or w/e.. people did. There are lots of things out there that might have names that you can't say, but are actually nutritious. (eg: pyridoxine hydrochloride)
If pronouncability was an indicator of healthfulness.. lead would be good for you.
This topic is a mine-field. The ingredient label can be a source of information or misinformation. High Fructose, Hydrogenated, Trans Fat and such are the scary things du jour. Wait a few months and the list of bad things will be substantially different. Scaring people is an industry and a way to sell more stuff. Bring out some organic, trans fat free, natural, high fiber, non-gmo, heirloom, swill; premium price it and stick it in Whole Foods and the herd will gobble it up.
Read the label for some natural, high fiber, bread and you might see an ingredient called "Natural Cellulostic Fiber" - doesn't sound so bad? How about "sawdust"? This is a USDA approved switcheroo for naming.
My $0.02
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables."
I eat almost no prepared food. Not much of a label to read on a bunch of broccoli or a pastured chicken at the farmer's market!
I also look at fiber content on packaged food because really, how long is it going to take something with 1g or less of fiber to leave your body?
if i'm buying something because it's supposed to be healthy, then i like the ingredient list to reflect that. i've also been using ingredient lists to teach my mother a bit more about nutrition - the other day we were grocery shopping and she saw a new product, a flavored lemonade. i told her if the first two ingredients were water and high fructose corn syrup it was junk and to put it back - and i was right. i ended up steering her towards a 100% juice instead. i explained that there were still calories and sugar, but it was a better treat.
other than that, my biggest rule is that if i'm buying a frozen entree, the chicken can't have an ingredient list - which pretty much disqualifies most frozen entrees containing chicken.
It pays to be an educated consumer. Just know what your eating.
My mother had a hard-and-fast rule: if water or sugar was one of the first ingredients, she did not buy it.
I am pretty thorough about reading labels, which is why my husband doesn't go grocery shopping with me! We, too, stay away from processed food, but for the occasional snack that I might pick up for the family, I am relentless about breaking down the ingredients.
My biggest pet peeve is how food manufacturers hide MSG in their products. Some names that glutamic acids (the family of salts that MSG belongs to) go under are: hydrolyzed vegetable proteins, autolyzed yeast, hydrolyzed yeast, yeast extract, soy extracts, and protein isolate.
I am a very careful label reader! But I have really been buying less processed food lately, which makes everything a LOT easier. I'm no scientist, so I have to trust what people say is good or bad, and while I always err on the cautious side, I'd rather just make my own stuff. Which is usually better anyways. :)
Also, on a related note, I keep (always on my phone) a list of foods that to buy organic. (No way could I afford to buy all organic.) So I always have that list with me. I also have a mental list of stuff to avoid...the usual. HFCS, colors with numbers, a large percentage of fat or sodium. Actually I should probably make another phone list, to make things easier.
The only canned/bottled food I buy is mostly single ingredient stuff--beans, coconut milk, tuna, tomatoes. So I look for that ingredient and maybe salt. If it has anything else, I don't buy it. That's why I love Pomi tomato products--the ONE ingredient is--ta da!--tomatoes.
i almost exclusively buy single ingredient foods, so no label reading required!
@PenguinLady: So your mom never ate watermelon or.. um... sugar? :)
Most liquids you buy, or partial liquids, have a first or second ingredient of water. It's what makes it, ya know, liquid.
I don't buy much packaged food, but my main expectation is that the ingredients listed would be something I'd probably use if I was making the food from scratch. One thing I always look for is carageenan and guar gum. These are natural ingredients (carageenan is made from seaweed) and they're often in lower-fat products because they give that bouncy texture that is missing when you remove the fat. They're also cheap fillers. They aren't BAD for you, not at all. But do I want cream cheese made with cheap seaweed goo? No, not particularly. It's usually a lower-quality item. It's not a deal-breaker ingredient but it tells me how much flavor I can expect.
Much like you, I try to avoid ingredients I don't recognize/can't pronounce. Since I don't always know what I'm getting when I eat out, I try to avoid HFCS and trans fats in those items I bring into my house. I realize that some of the things I don't prepare may contain ingredients I don't want to eat on a regular basis.
As for other foods, when I buy canned/boxed tomatoes, I only want to see tomatoes in the ingredient list. The same goes, as much as possible, for other "whole" foods. I don't want extra ingredients. Keep it as close to nature as possible, please!
The top of my list is HFCS but more importantly, I look for what isn't on the ingredient list. Obviously, the fewer items the better, IMHO.
I do the Michael Pollan "no more than five ingredients" thing. Of course there are exceptions - a fabulous pumpernickel bread can have about 19. But in general keeping to that makes me put the cheddar bunnies back on the shelf and buy real bread and real cheese. Also, very few things that keep to this rule have trans-fats/HFCS/msg or whatever is the worry of the day.
d4kk1tt3n, I agree – if you "don't recognise/can't pronounce" an ingredient, all that says is that you should probably find out what the thing is, not that you should avoid it point-blank. Yes, it does probably mean that the food is quite processed, and therefore there are probably much better alternatives that don't have the hard-to-pronounce ingredients, but that's a separate issue. To make "unpronounceable" equate with "unhealthy" in your own mind is just foolish, and will limit your likelihood of actually bothering to find out what it is and whether it's to be avoided.
Words are our servants, not our masters.
Most of my food is checked in 3 steps:
1. What the first 3 ingredients are
2. Scan the list for anything hydrogenated. Is it weird I get a sense of satisfaction when I catch a product claiming it has no trans fat but then find some in the ingredient list? That less than .5 g FDA rule really irks me.
3. Try to avoid food that has "enriched" come before one of its ingredients.
~4. Not really a rule I always follow (cant live without some of my snacks every so often) is how much sugar/salt is in a serving.
One thing I never check is calories. I have some friends where that's all they live by. I've never paid attention to them. I think by following my rules it pretty much eliminates all the bad stuff anyway.
My mom taught me to read labels. I had to compare all packaged cereals to a package of cereals and "explain" why I should eat the whatevers.
And then because I cooked a lot of the time, I had to compare store brand and fancy label and sizes and decide what was the better purchase.
Also serving size, especially for snacks. And I had to compare them to a piece of fruit.
Sounds dire except it was pretty cool.
I stopped for many years but now I am very, very careful. I avoid anything that clearly isn't "food" and hew pretty closely to Michael Pollan's "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly vegetables."
I eat soy but not what I term "processed soy junk." Or "processed corn junk" or "processed wheat junk."
And I look personal care labels the same way.
I read ingrediant lists, but that's because I know certain things mess me up, especially because of a health problem I have. It's basically HFCS, MSG, or high amounts of sugar. Also, I check for the whole grain stamp, if it applies. We don't buy tons of prepared food, though.
Once a month we get ice cream, though, and then I don't pay attention to the sugar.
Things with one ingredient are best - chicken, apple, broccoli etc. After that, I don't really read ingredients but maybe I should start. I try to stay away from anything which is obviously fake/coloured/preserved etc.
I actually grew up reading those labels... my mom has a corn allergy, and my brother and I had to go to the grocery store with her in the summers. So she'd get me to help her look for those -ose ingredients, since those are generally made from corn products.
I just don't buy pre-packaged food of any kind-not just for health but for cost too-it's usually cheaper for me to make my own soup, baked beans, biscuits... and I try to avoid palm oil at all costs because of the destruction of the rainforests and that's in practically everything and is not labelled as such (usually labelled as seed or vegetable oils). A recent study of soups available to buy in the UK showed that they had the same amount of salt in them as a packet of crisps!
@JudiAU that sounds like a great activity for me & my kids! :)
I'm trying to learn how to live without processed foods, and for a good part, have been very successful. Sodium nitrate is one of the ingredients I consistently avoid.
The only thing I'm really on the look out for is high-fructose corn syrup. There are four or five brands of plain tomato sauce at my closest grocery store and I think only one of them doesn't have HFCS in it. Sweet surprise, indeed.