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| Nutrition Facts Label made easier |
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by Kory Zimney, PT, DPT - October 17, 2011
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Gaining improved understanding of the Nutrition Facts Label on packaged and prepared foods will help you know how the food adds (or subtracts) from your nutrition goals for the day.
Serving size:
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Check how many servings the package contains. Often times things packaged in a way that we would think are single serving actually are two or three servings on the Nutrition Facts Label. Missing this crucial fact can easily lead to over consuming far more calories than you intend to.
Calories:
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If your diet intake needs are around 2000 calories a day (This would be for a 40 year old female that weighs 150 pounds and is about 5’ 6” and is lightly active), then look at the total calories, knock off the last digit and divide by 2. This will give you a rough estimate of percent of calories for the day. For example if it is a 300 calorie frozen meal, that would be 15% of your daily calorie needs.
Daily Values (DV):
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While the percentages can vary person to person you want to look at balancing your diet with all three macro nutrients (Carbohydrates, Fat and Protein).
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General guideline percentages:
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Carbohydrates 45-65% of your calories.
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Protein: 10-30% of your calories. To find minimum grams needed take you weight and divide by 3, to find maximum take one gram of protein for each pound of weight. For example if you weigh 150 pounds, you should at a maximum get 150 grams of protein and a minimum 50 grams.
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Fat: no more than 30% of your diet should come from fat calories.
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Try to look for food that the % DV of fiber is equal to or greater than % DV of carbohydrates.
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Most people tend to have too much sugar and not enough fiber in their diet. Avoid eating foods that have more sugar grams than fiber grams.
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Sodium content is an ever growing number in many foods. Try to find foods with less then 5% to help keep sodium intake in check. Too little sodium is very rarely a problem for most people’s diet needs in the United States.
Kory Zimney is a practicing physical therapist in Iowa. He focuses on helping people move forward with their health and function through movement and exercise. This and other articles by Kory can be found at his blog: http://koryzimney.blogspot.com/
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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