No matter which of my programs you choose to do, or what your goals are, or what your “deal-breakers” are, I encourage every single one of my athletes to eat as much real, whole, unprocessed foods as possible. While we always go into more detail and different nuances of this request on a case-by-case basis, it’s fair to say it’s my baseline. Eat real, whole foods as often as possible, limit or eliminate processed foods to the degree that you are willing and able.
While to some this may sound simple enough to do, for many it can be difficult - sometimes extremely difficult. Due to this difficulty, the ability to read and understand the nutrition labels on processed foods is a vital skill to have for anyone hoping to look, feel, and perform their best. Basically, if you’re going to eat processed foods, you should have the ability to understand what is in them in order to make educated decisions about your choices.
So let’s jump in with both feet, team. Here’s some guidance and guidelines on how to read a nutrition label:
The first step is usually to look at a product’s nutrition facts label, which tells you how many servings are in the package, what the serving size is, what nutrients are in the food, and the percentage of the Recommended Daily Value (according to federal health guidelines) of those nutrients it provides. While this information is surely valuable in most circumstances, today I want to focus on what is usually found below that panel - the list of ingredients.
To begin with, food manufacturers are required by law to list all ingredients on the nutrition label. In addition, they must abide by the following rules:
Ingredients must be listed in order of amount (the greatest listed first, the smallest listed last).
Some ingredients may be listed under umbrella terms like “spices” and “flavors.”
Names of any FDA-approved color additives must be included on the label.
If a food contains one of the eight major food allergens (eggs, milk, fish, tree nuts, shellfish, peanuts, soybeans, or wheat), it must be included on the label.
I encourage you to take note that these rules primarily encompass unnatural items, instead of real, whole, “paleolithic” style foods. In other words, there’s no ingredient list on a bunch of bananas or a filet of salmon because they are the only ingredients (banana or salmon, respectively). With that being said, and as stated in the beginning, most of my athletes are not willing or able to meet their goals on a strictly paleolithic diet. So how do we sort out the really bad stuff? What are some good rules of thumb?
Five Ingredients or Less
Michael Pollan writes in his book, Food Rules, “Avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.” Other suggestions include: Don’t eat foods that contain ingredients you can’t pronounce or that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” I think this is a great place to start.
Top Three Rule
Many health and nutrition experts will suggest scanning the first three ingredients on a label, since they make up the biggest portion of that food. In accordance with this suggestion, I advise avoiding products if refined seed oils or sugars are in the top three (note- this is in addition to my advice to always avoid 100% of gluten and soy).
Two Lines, You’re Just Fine
If the first two rules are still too restrictive, there is also the advice to avoid buying any product with an ingredient list longer than two lines. Really the number or length of ingredients that you decide to adopt is somewhat arbitrary, but the basic idea is to give yourself a more clear idea of what processed foods will get the green or the red light.
As is almost always the case, this topic can get as deep and as complicated as you want to let it get. Should we all be avoiding all processed foods? Maybe - there’s certainly a compelling case for this. But the reality is that we are all living complex lives in a complex world, and most of us need to hit the “easy button” from time to time. How often we hit that button is ultimately up to each individual, but my hope is that this article will help you make informed choices when you are choosing packaged and/or processed foods.