Walking into a grocery store can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re looking for. That’s why so many of us write lists instead of shuffling aimlessly up one aisle and down the next.

But even then, when you know exactly what foods you’re looking for, how do you decide which brand is best?

Does the packaging look more professional? Is the name recognizable? Did you like the jingle from their commercial?

The sad truth about the food industry is that it’s a money-making business. Whether we like it or not, the majority of the information we receive about a product is being passed down through marketing teams and not nutritionists.

But, thankfully, that’s why I’m here!

It is possible to make informed decisions on your nutrition at the grocery store, but you can’t put your trust in the companies competing for your business. Expect that their big promises might be misleading and always double check nutritional claims.

For the basics, here’s an example nutrition label provided by the FDA:

Most of this should be familiar given that nutrition labels are included on the back of most our foods, but what exactly should you be paying attention to? And what might be misleading?

1. Never Judge a Food by Its Cover 

When you’re standing in a grocery aisle, it’s best to consider a product’s packaging as an advertisement saying, Buy Me! And just like when you see an commercial on television for the world’s best anything, you should know to take those claims with a grain of salt.

Producers know their customers want to eat healthy, and so oftentimes they’ll slap a big red Healthy! or Natural! on the label to lure you in. But unless it also includes an organic sticker, those words mean absolutely nothing.

Likewise, terms like “no added sugar” or “low-calorie” or “light” are often misleading.

A manufacturer can easily spotlight one nutritional claim to distract you from the unhealthy truths behind it. For instance, a low-fat option might actually have had its fats replaced with more sugars, which is not a healthier option but is technically lower in fat.

2. Serving Size or Serving Lies?

A food distributor can’t lie on the nutritional label, but they can certainly fudge the truth. One of the most common ways for them to do so is by altering the serving size. 

Next time you’re grabbing a snack at the checkout counter, look at how many serving sizes are in one package. You’ll be shocked at how often a small bag of chips, a singular protein bar, or a can of soda is actually two, three, even four servings!

That means that when you check the back label and assume the 280 calories is perfect for a little mid-afternoon snack, you could actually be eating far more than that.

The same goes for the rest of your nutritional intake. Below the calories on a food label is the percentage daily values of nutrients based off a 2,000-calorie diet. If you look at the sample label at the top of the page, what originally looked like a meal containing 12% of your daily cholesterol intake would quickly jump up to nearly 50% after eating the full container.

3. Eat What You Know

If you start looking at the ingredients on the back of a box and find you can’t pronounce the words, then the easiest piece of advice would be to put that food back on the shelf.

Foods are processed so that they can be made more quickly, more abundantly, and more cost-effectively. As a result, they are drained of their nutritional value. If there are more than five to seven ingredients listed within a food product, there is a very good chance it holds very little nutritional value.

As a rule of thumb, avoid foods with ingredients like natural flavors, seed oils, gums, and any chemical sounding names.  

The best foods for you are whole foods, A.K.A. the one-ingredient foods: apple, broccoli, oats, nuts, beans, etc.

If given the opportunity, whole foods should always be your first choice. 

4. Find All the Secret Sugars 

There’s a time and place for sugars. Sometimes you want a sweet. Sometimes you deserve a sweet. But there’s no point in being surprised by sugars when you didn’t ask for them.

Added sugars are empty calories, which mean that they are providing essentially no nutritional value outside of carbohydrates. They fill you up quickly and keep you from eating the healthier food you actually need.  

They are — and this shouldn’t be breaking news — not great for you. 

And this is why food manufacturers will go to great lengths to hide them by listing sugars under different names.

Honey, syrup, nectar, molasses, fruit juice concentrate, corn syrup, corn sugar, fructose, glucose, dextrose, maltose, and so many more — all sugar!

If you see any of these at the top of the ingredients list, then the food is made primarily of added sugars and should be avoided. But don’t stop there! Manufacturers are smart enough to know that listing a sugar as their top ingredient could hurt sales, so they oftentimes will divide their added sugars into multiple names (honey and glucose and brown sugar, for instance) so that not one of them is listed at the top.

Look through the whole ingredients list. If you see multiple versions of sugar, then the product is most definitely full of empty calories.

5. Avoid Excess Sodium

Salt makes our food taste more flavorful, but too much of it can be a bad thing, leading to an increase in blood pressure, heart disease, and other complications.  

And there are tons of foods that we may not think of as salty, that contain large amounts of it, such as cheese, bread, and sweets.

It’s recommended that we consume no more than 6g of salt a day or 2,300mg of sodium, which comes out to the size of a teaspoon.

Do your best to avoid foods that contain 500mg of sodium per serving. Low-sodium foods are those that contain less than 140mg per serving.

What It All Means?

Shopping for groceries is more complicated than ever. For everything you’d like to buy, there are dozens of brands competing for your business. That means flashy packaging, stand-out logos, and catchy slogans, all of which can overshadow the most important part of the decision making process: the food.

When making a purchase, begin with the food— it’s ingredients, nutrition, and source.

Then, and only then, should you break a tie based on which brand has the cutest mascot.

Learn More Through My Personal Nutrition Programs

There’s no one-stop-shop for nutrition. Maximizing your body’s wellbeing, requires all your body to participate. That’s why my holistic nutrition services focus on more than just education and meal plans — I work with my clients one-on-one to learn about their daily habits and goals to devise healthy lifestyle changes.

If you’d like to take a full-bodied approach to boosting your immune system or simply feeling better, reach out today for a free 20-minute consultation that’ll have you on the path towards feeling great!