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Confused everytime you go to the local supermarket and try to read the labels-polyunsaturated trans-fat? Feeling more like a cryptographer deciphering some kind of ‘hieroglyphics’ than someone trying to shop healthy? The ability to read and evaluate food labels is not just a matter of choosing to eat healthy. To some people trying to manage chronic disease like heart ailment or diabetes, label reading is a critical and lots of times a life saving matter.
Getting Started
Look for the Nutrition Facts label on the food product. Begin your reading at the top of the label with the serving size and number of servings per package. Compare the serving size to how much you eat. If you eat double the serving size, then you need to double the calories and other nutrient numbers, including the percent daily value. The daily values tell you if the nutrients in a serving of food contribute a lot or a little to the recommended daily intake.
Continue down the label to calories and calories from fat. Calories measure how much energy you get from a serving of the food. Compare the amount of calories in how much you will eat of the food to the total calories you need for a day. If you are trying to manage your weight, choosing foods that are lower in calories will help. Even small differences in calories per serving can add up over the course of making healthier choices all day long.
The nutrients on a label are ordered from what we should limit, such as fat, cholesterol, and sodium, to those nutrients we need to make sure we get enough of, such as dietary fiber, vitamin A & C, calcium and iron.
Looking for the bad stuff
The first ones to look for are saturated fat and trans fat - notorious for their ability to raise the cholesterol levels and increase risk of heart disease. Saturated fat is found in greater amounts in butter, cheese, whole milk, whole milk products, meat and poultry. Trans fat are used by food processors to increase the shelf life of processed food. Foods high in trans-fat include stick margarine, vegetable shortening, cookies, crackers, snack foods, fried foods and other processed foods. If the amount of trans-fat is not listed, look in the ingredients list for words such as ‘ partially hydrogenated oils.’ This indicates trans-fats are probably in the product.
How do you know how much is too much? Based on a 2,000 calorie diet your total fat should not go over 65 grams and saturated or trans-fat should not be more than a combined 20 grams. How much is that?
Homemade hamburger (3 ounces): 15 grams of total fat, six grams of saturated fat Cheddar cheese (1 ounce): 9 grams of total fat, six grams of saturated fat Fast food French fries (medium): 18 grams of total fat, five grams of saturated fat, five grams of trans-fat
Find the right fat
Aside from staying away from bad fats, try to get as much good fat as possible - mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated as found in vegetable oils, nuts, fatty fish, avocados and olives. Better yet, pick food products with the highest level of monounsaturated fat like olive and canola oil. Choose the squeeze or spray margarines or even a light version in a tub because stick margarines have more trans-fat than the other types. Margarine that has less trans-fat is still a better choice than butter because butter is so high in saturated fat. Same thing goes with cheese, pick one that is lower in total fat and saturated fat such as mozzarella part-skimmed.
Cereals
When picking out breakfast cereals, choose items with high dietary fiber content. Fibers are important in lessening the risk of diabetes, heart disease and colon cancer. Choose one that has at least two-and-a-half grams of fiber per serving. And watch out for the sugar content in the cereal. Remember the grams of sugar represent added sugar as well as the natural sugar found in fruit and milk. Check out the ingredient to see where the sugar is coming from. If sugar or other sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup are among the first three ingredients, that food product is probably pretty high in added sugar.
Snacks
Snacks don’t have to mean junk food. Healthy snacks include fruits, vegetables, whole grain breads or even a few bites from last night’s well-balanced dinner. When eating snacks think about the serving size and how much you are actually consuming and also be aware of marketing ploys, such as a low-calorie cookie. The low-calorie cookie is really not low calorie at all. Often times when manufacturers take the fat out of cookies, they add some sugar. And sometimes when they take sugar out, they add some fat. Cookies are not the only culprit. Crackers and chips—especially those with partially hydrogenated oil—contain higher levels of trans-fat, which is bad for the heart. A better choice would be the reduced-fat version of the cracker because it will have 25 percent less fat and therefore, less trans-fat. http://diabetes.about.com/cs/nutritiondiet/a/bln_food_label_2.htm
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Personal Trainer Certification with the I.A.R.T.
Dr. Di Pasquale is a licensed physician in Ontario, Canada, focusing on Nutrition and Sports Medicine, as well as a world class athlete for over twenty years... 
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