Tips and Tricks Tuesday: Food Claims

I encourage label reading.  Look at what you're eating. Understand what's in it.  Compare foods to one another.  But before you even flip a food around you've probably already been tempted by a nutrient content claim.  Companies put them in ads, using them to market their products, encourage you a little more to choose their product.  But what does "lite" mean?  What makes foods a good source of fiber? These claims are regulated by the FDA.  Here are some of the most common claims:

Calorie free: Any food with less than 5 Calories.

Sugar free:  less than 0.5 g of sugar (not exactly sugar free especially if you eat more than the serving size!)

Fat free:  Less than 0.5g of fat.

Low fat:  3g of fat or less.

Reduced or less fat: At least 25% less fat than the original product.  This can be a misleading claim.  If the original had very high fat even a reduction of 25% may not make this a healthy food.  One more reason to read the nutrition label and see what is really in the food.

Low in saturated fat:  1 gm of saturated fat or less and not more than 15% of the calories consumed coming from saturated fat.

Light (lite): At least 1/3 less calories or no more than half the fat than the original product, or no more than half the sodium of the original product.  Again a good reason to read the label, if you had a product that was originally 1000 calories it's been reduced by a 1/3 however it is still providing 600+calories.

No Sodium or sodium free:  Less than 5 mg of Sodium or no Sodium Chloride in the ingredients.

Very low Sodium:  35mg or less of Sodium

Low Sodium:  140 mg or less of Sodium.

Reduced or less Sodium:  At least 25% less Sodium than the original.

High Fiber: 5 gm or more of fiber.  (Remember you want 25-30g of fiber per day).

Good source of fiber:  2.5 to 4.9 g of fiber.

While these claims are a good place to start it is still important to read the nutrition facts to get the full picture of what you're eating. The more you know the easier it gets to make good choices.