Episode 18 of The Living Life Well Show: How to read Food Labels and Identify the "Secret Sugars"
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Living Life Well Show, the intersection of God's Word, today's science, and healthy living with common sense application, all based on the truth of the Word of God. I'm your host, Dr. Jon Skelton. Now let's get straight to the truth. All right. For today's show. I'm really excited to talk about something that is very practical, something that we can all use and something that there's really a lot of confusion about. And that's food labels, food labels are very confusing. It's hard to know. Where to really look. And so I'm going to take you through a practical example with visual aids so that you can really see this.
You can go to the show notes and there'll be a link in here. To actually a little [00:01:00] handout that I use with all my clients that tells about food labels. What's in them, how to read them, how to know if you are really making a good choice when you're selecting that food.
So before we even start there, I think the best foods are those essentially without labels. What we're really talking about is buying from the produce section, buying that fresh produce. Secondarily you know, some easy to read labels that there's not a lot of confusion about is in the butcher section.
So really paying attention in those sections makes things easier. But sometimes when you're in the frozen food section, or definitely when you're in that middle of the grocery store you're going to run into food labels, whether it's on cans, whether it's on boxes bags. Whatever it is, you really need to look at those food labels to really determine, Hey, is this even healthy?
Is this really what. Is going to be best for [00:02:00] me, or is there a better choice, even though it doesn't have all these great sayings on there, like all natural or organic or any of those things. So what I want to do today is really kind of go through what I considered to be a good food label or a reasonable food to eat. Versus something that just has a ton of fluff. In there and really is it healthy for you at all?
So let's take a good food label.
So that first food that we're going to talk about is really a can of black beans. And so if everybody looks in that nutrition facts, section that box that tells you the serving size, the calories the percent daily value basically from fat and cholesterol, different. The electrolytes, sodium and potassium. Carbs proteins the different vitamins.
Everybody seems to really kind of go there to determine whether [00:03:00] this is something that is good and healthy for me or not. And that's okay. But that's the fluff. That's all the secondary stuff that should go in. When you look at purchasing something. After you have looked at the ingredients. So the ingredients section, it's that fine print.
That's there in the little box. It's kind of, all those words that they say at the end of the commercial for the newest drug, where the guys. Talking 500 miles an hour and telling you all the potential side effects, that's what this ingredient section is. And so I want you to think about it in those terms.
And so you really want to look. For those hidden items, those things that can really cause inflammation that can cause you to do you rail your diet. So, and this example this can of black beans has really only 1, 2, [00:04:00] 3 ingredients. So I like to use a rule of thumb. If something has five ingredients or less, it is minimally processed.
Okay. And that's really what we're going for. So step one is really must determine how many ingredients are in this. If it's five or less, it's probably pretty safe. Okay. So on this ingredients label, it's organic black soybeans, water and Comba seaweed. That's it. . And you may not know what Columbus seaweed is, but you know what seaweed is, right.
So you know what water is and you know what black soybeans are. Okay. The organic is relatively, honestly, a bit irrelevant. Because it's really difficult to know exactly what they mean when they say organic. Organic is [00:05:00] generally going to be free of pesticides. However, what I will tell you is there is a lot of bleed over into crops that are grown organic right next to ones that aren't so organic plays less of a role of when you're really looking at food labels.
Now don't get me wrong. If you can buy organic, you should buy organic. But really look at the dirty dozen and clean 15. The environmental work group site is a great place to go. And really that's looking at fresh produce and really determining which ones you should or shouldn't buy organic.
So, the word organic, I'm not really worried about, but basically this really looks good. So now what I'm going to do is now I'm going to go up to the nutrition facts label. Now, what I'm looking for here is, okay. How much is a serving size? How [00:06:00] calorically dense is this? Am I making this as a side or is this the main course?
So. In this case. It has a serving size of a half cup and there's three and a half cups in this container. And each serving is 120 calories and I get 50 calories from fat. So the rest of it, I'm not really that interested in. Yes, it's nice to know out how much your saturated fat is, where the trans fat. And those things, but really if you are paying attention with five ingredients or less and making sure that they are good ingredients, The rest of the information on the label, fairly irrelevant. Really the calories.
So just so that you can have a relative idea of how much you should eat. Of this substance. in your overall meal planning is really what you need. Pass that you don't, you don't [00:07:00] need a lot of this other information because if you are eating a really good whole foods type diet, then you're going to get your percent daily allowance of all these different items in here.
Okay. Now if you're really trying to stack protein, if you're really trying to add weight, add muscle, those things, then yes. Looking at the protein. And if all things are equal and you want to pay attention to that label, to look at the protein content or fat content. And compare one to the other then.
Great. But don't start there, start at the ingredients and then move to those secondary concerns because if you have good ingredients, You're starting yourself off. For success. If you have bad ingredients, I don't really care how much protein, how much fat. What the serving size is, or isn't. And what the calorie count is because I'm not going to eat it because [00:08:00] it isn't going to be helpful to you.
It's going to cause inflammation and it's going to be destructive to your overall health. So. That's an example of a good feed level. So let's take a bad food label. So guys, you hear me talk a lot about breads and, you know, in general, how breads can be really difficult to get a lot of good ingredients out of.
And so let's take wonder bread, so wonder bread. For example, when we look at this ingredient label, It is very long. It starts out unbleached enriched flour. Wheat, and then it has in parentheses a flower. Wheat flour, malted, barley flour, niacin reduced iron thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid.
And then it goes on with further ingredients water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast contains 2% or less [00:09:00] of each of the following. Calcium carbonate soybean oil, wheat, gluten salt dough, conditioners. And then again, parentheses contains one or more of the following sodium sterol lack.
Lack delayed. Calcium, sterile actally. Monoglycerides mono and diglycerides distilled monoglycerides calcium peroxide, calcium iodide datum, a Fox related mano and die. Glycerols. So once your short. I'm not through the label yet. And we are well above five, so, and half that stuff. You know, you don't even know what that is. So unbleached enriched flour means that basically it has been stripped of everything and now it has nothing good in it.
And so they're adding all these things back in. [00:10:00] So they're adding iron, they're adding thiamin and they're adding B vitamins and niacin. They're adding you know, what sounds to be good folic acid. And so they're adding. All these things back in, because it has essentially become a unnutritious product. Everything after that is basically just to make it shelf stable. Basically so that it can sit in your pantry for a while and not rot.
Okay. So have you ever done this? Have you ever had your kids get a. Happy meal or some sort of fast food. Specifically McDonald's I think that you can look on, on YouTube and there's a guy that ate McDonald's. You know, for every day for 90 days. And I think I did this experiment in there as well, where basically they take like a hamburger, set it on the dash of the car and leave it. In there for days that they never changes.
There is no mold growing. There is nothing going on. It looks just as [00:11:00] pristine at about day 90. As it did the day you bought it. That's not natural. That is not enriched in my opinion. So you want to really look at labels. And this direction you want to look at those ingredients. So if you notice. In here, you. I told you that it had high fructose corn syrup.
So most of you probably recognize that as sugar and surprisingly, there is a lot of sugar in our bread and bread products. And so it's hidden and high fructose corn syrup is one of the worst ones. And it can be hidden and lots of different things. So let's talk about other kind of names for sugar that are hidden in our foods. So with this wonder bread, it's not edible.
I mean, it has too many ingredients, too many bad substances. And so you, it doesn't pass the [00:12:00] rule of five. Okay. Five ingredients or less. The ingredients that it does have are horrible. So don't even waste your time going above that. To look at what the caloric content is, what a serving size is.
All those other things. Because it's horrible. And I will tell you it's going to be difficult to find a bread that has less than five substances in it. So here are the things that you want to make sure that it doesn't have. So if you look at the CDC website they list a lot of different names for sugar.
And so, I want you to become familiar with these, but one of the more recent things that people have started adding that are hidden substances, hidden sugars. Are "natural flavors or natural flavoring. Organic flavors, natural colors" . So these are all hidden words [00:13:00] for. Very much processed products.
And so we don't want to use that. So other things is obviously if it has the word sugar in it, so a brown sugar. Okay. Cane sugar, cane juice, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose. Fruit nectars. Okay. That is going to be extracted a sugar from the fruit glucose, high fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose malt syrup. Maltose maple syrup, molasses, raw sugar, and sucrose. Now am I saying that all of those are bad?
No. If you want to do honey, I think that's okay. If you want to do some maple syrup, that's okay. The rest of them. It is very difficult to get anything good from these things. And again, this is where even if it has the best of those products, the honey and the maple [00:14:00] syrup. You then secondarily need to go and read and look and see. How many carbs, how many calories from sugar am I getting? In a single serving, what is a single serving. And then that's where you can kind of judging and start to compare apples to apples, oranges, oranges. So a few other names just in case you don't want to go and look at this document. It's going to be. Anhydrous dextrose. We talked about syrups, so brown rice syrup. Pancake syrup. Some other things on here. Confectioners powdered sugar.
Okay. Corn syrup. White granulated sugar is going to be on their liquid fructose. Evaporated corn sweetener. Okay. Stevia Monkfruit and Agave syrup. So these are all natural, right? With maple syrup and honey. These are all highly processed. The Stevia leaf. [00:15:00] Is being extracted in the extraction process.
Just like when you drink a fruit juice, you are removing all the benefits. Of the plant. And so when you do that, you are going to increase the inflammatory reaction. You're going to increase and spike those glucose levels as well as your pancreas is response to that. So you want to make sure that you really understand what sugar is, what it isn't. How to read that label.
And so I hope this has been informative. A very short sweet podcast pun intended. And so I hope this has beneficial for you. I hope this will help you. And I look forward to speaking with you again. soon thanks. And God bless.
That's it for this episode of the Living Life Well Show. If you like what you've heard and want to learn more, or [00:16:00] want to know how to put this into practice for yourself, go to livelifewellclinic.com. Until next time, this is Dr. Jon Skelton saying, go out and live the truth so you can live life well. The preceding is for entertainment and educational purposes only. It is not meant to be used to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. The information contained in this show does not substitute the need for a qualified medical professional, nor is it meant to provide medical advice or services.
If you feel information presented in this show may apply to you, we recommend you seek out the help of a qualified medical professional who can evaluate and treat your specific concerns.
