Food Labels Can Guide You to Good Eating

Men who like to start their day with a big bowl of cereal should check to make sure it does not exceed their daily allowance for iron (10 milligrams per day). Consuming too much iron can increase a man’s risk for heart disease and cancer. Good advice: Choose cereals with little or no added iron.

• Use labels to compare the fat content of various choices. For example, a serving of regular mayonnaise has 100 calories. And all of these come from fat. But the same brand of light mayonnaise halves the fat and calories. And if you opt for fat-free mayonnaise, it has only 10 calories, none from fat.
• Remember that not every food you buy must contain less than 30 percent fat to comply with national guidelines. The label can tell you what percentage of your daily fat calories a serving supplies. For example, on a 2,000-calorie diet, a 2-tablespoon serving of peanut butter contains 37 percent of the fat a person should eat all day.

Sharon Smalling, a registered dietitian with Memorial Hermann Hospital, says guidelines for a diet of less than 35 percent of calories from fat applies to average intake over time — a meal, a day or even a week — rather than each portion.

“When using peanut butter on whole wheat bread with jelly, and the rest of the meal contains fruit, baked chips and skim milk, all of which are virtually fat-free, then the meal itself contains less than 35 percent of calories from fat and meets the national guidelines.”

Try to balance small servings of high-fat foods with lots of low-fat choices. This can help to keep your daily intake at or below the recommended level.

• If your goal is to maintain or lose weight, remember that calories still count. The labels reveal that many low-fat foods, such as some cakes and cookies, remain high in calories, thanks to added sugar.
• Look for labels that say light or low in reference to sodium content. A tablespoon of regular soy sauce, for example, contains 920 milligrams of sodium. This adds up to about 38 percent of an adult’s recommended limit for the whole day. The same amount of light soy sauce, in contrast, has just 575 milligrams of sodium.

Call 713-222-CARE NOW for a chance to win a personal shopping tour at Central Market with a Memorial Hermann dietitian. Winners may invite a guest and will receive a $50 Central Market gift certificate to use on the tour.