One of the basic necessities of a human being is food. No one, I guess will argue, that even if people can survive with water for a period of time, people will always find and choose to eat food especially for Filipinos. Most Filipinos really love eating. In fact, some of us are eating 3-5 times in a day. Nothing is really bad with having an eating habit. What’s bad is if we do not look or watch what we are eating. Food can kill, particularly if we eat too much.
Eating 3-5 times a day does not mean you are developing a healthy life. Healthy life is a balance of eating the right food and exercising from time-to-time. One way of eating the right food is to check the nutrition facts on every food label that we purchased. People, most probably, ignore this but this might be a step on starting a healthy life. But how do we read nutrition facts?
Steps on reading nutrition facts
- Start with a serving size – Checking the serving size will help you know if you are eating the right amount of that food. You might be eating double than the normal serving which means that you are actually taking double of all the numbers of the nutrition on the label.
- Tally and check the number of the following nutritional facts to know how much you are going to take per serving.
- Calories and Calories per Fat.
- Total Fat.
- Sodium (Salt)
- Cholesterol count
- Total Carbohydrates
- Fiber
- Sugar
- Protein
- Vitamins (Vitamin A, B, C or E) and Minerals ( Iron and Calcium)
- See the Percent Daily Value – Percent Daily Value is based from the 2000 calorie daily diet.
- Look at the “Information at the Bottom of the Label – Each body needs the right amount of nutrients per serving. This label shows the upper and lower limits of the nutrient your body needs. For example, if you eat one piece of pancake, one serving will provide you 5% of your Daily Value of the possible 100%. That means that you have to eat 95% more of the Daily Value coming from other food or resources. Thus, if you eat 2 pieces of pancake, you will have 10% of your Daily Value and so on.
You daily dose of nutrients
We often neglect the fact of reading and checking our daily food intake. Sometimes, we forget that monitoring of the food we eat is one of the best ways to start a healthy life. Nutrition Facts on every food label is written not just as display but also as way of reminding as to be conscious of our food intake. So, why not make it a habit to read on them instead of just eating?
Always remember that the quantity of your food intake does not mean you are becoming healthy; it is the quality of what you eat that counts the most.
