Understanding food labels and Importance of portion size

Eating a balanced, nutritious diet builds the foundation for a healthy body free from diseases. If your diet is not appropriate, you become prone to illnesses and fatigue. Such a poor diet can impact your performance at work. For children, unhealthy foods will lead to bad health, development issues, and low academic performance. If you have not been functioning effectively at work and have frequent health issues, your diet may be the primary reason. Get yourself evaluated by one of the top dieticians in Mumbai so that you can make essential changes to your diet.

Your Guide to Understanding Food Labels Correctly

Whatever packaged or processed product you buy has a food label. This label contains the nutrition information of the food and tells you whether the food is healthy for you or not. At the top section, you will find product-specific information like nutrients, calories, and others, while the bottom section contains the percentage of Daily Value. Consult the Best Nutritionist in Mumbai to know more about food labels.

To help you interpret food labels better, we provide you with the following useful tips:

1.Serving Size: This is usually the first piece of information on your food label. It denotes the standard amount of a food, such as a cup or an ounce. The serving size is shown as a common household measure that is appropriate to the food (such as cup, tablespoon, piece, slice. ),  You can see the size of a single serving, along with the total number of servings per package. Abiding by this rule helps you avoid overeating.

2.Total calories: It denotes the calories you consume per serving and the total calories you get from consuming the whole package. It indicates how much energy you get from eating a single serving of the product.

3.Nutrients: This section shows the number of particular nutrients in the package, such as vitamins A, C, D, E, B vitamins like B6, B12, proteins, dietary fibre, iron, magnesium, calcium, choline, potassium, and others. It also shows the nutrients you should consume in lesser amounts like saturated fat, added sugars, or sodium.

4.Percent Daily Value (%DV): It mentions the percentage of the Daily Value for each nutrient in a single food serving. They are reference amounts shown in grams or milligrams showing the amount you need to consume or not in a day. From this data, you can determine if one serving is rich in nutrients or not. Some ingredients like total sugars do not have a %DV.

Significance of Portion Size

Paying a visit to one of the  best qualified dieticians in Mumbai will help understand better the importance of portion size. The serving size mentioned in the food label is the amount people eat or drink typically. You should not think it is a recommendation of the quantity you need to consume. The nutrient quantities displayed on the label take the size of the serving as a reference. You have to know how many servings are there in a single package.

This example will help you understand this better. If one serving represents a cup, and you eat two cups, then you are consuming two servings. That means you are consuming double the nutrients and calories indicated on the label.

So, you need to remember that large portions can make you gain weight. You need to consume portions based on your age, health, condition, and whether you want to gain or lose weight.

Your goal should be to maintain ideal body weight by balancing the number of calories you consume with the calories you burn. Raheja Hospital houses the Top Nutritionist in Mumbai who can guide you about the ideal nutrition you need to consume and how to understand the information on food labels. The nutritionist will advise you on what foods to consume to maintain a perfect weight for optimum health and excellent energy levels.