Are Nutritional Labels Making You Fat?

I’ve heard it from my clients a hundred times. They’ve counted their calories, they’ve been faithful to their workout regimen, and still the scale does not show them favorable results. Some of my clients get discouraged at this point and blame their genetics, their metabolism, or some strange idea that they can gain weight just by looking at food. For many of them, however, the answer is much simpler than all of these ideas. They have been fooled by marketing campaigns and nutrition labels that bet on the fact that you aren’t like me and read ALL of the information on the product. And even if you do read the whole label, there are definitions of the descriptive terms on food labels that you may not be aware of.

In fact, marketers bank on the fact that you WON’T read the fine print, look at serving sizes, or know what “free,” “lean,” and “reduced” actually mean as it pertains to food labels. Food packaging and advertisements sell that the food is healthy, will help you lose weight, or help you gain muscle. As I tell my clients and college students, the front of the product lies to you and seduces you, the back label MOSTLY tells the truth.

Big FAT Liesnn FDA’s standards for food labels state that something can be considered “free” (of fat, trans fat, saturated fat, calories, carbohydrates) if it contributes less than 5 calories per serving. That’s right! Your “fat-free” foods can still contain fat. Your “calorie-free” foods can still contain calories. Now a few calories here and there might not seem like a big deal, but add them up and you will find that even as few as an extra 100 calories a day will make you gain about a pound of fat each month.

My favorite examples of foods that are misleading are “non-fat” cooking sprays like PAM or the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray. PAM clearly states on the front label that it is “for Fat Free Cooking,” which leads you, the consumer, to believe that it contains no fat. Then, you turn the can around and it says in the Nutritional Facts that each serving contains no fat or calories. Now, if you are trying to lose weight or get ready for a competition, this seems like an excellent addition to your diet plan because there is no fat or calories in this product. Right? Wrong!!!

In the ingredient list, the first ingredient is canola oil which only “adds a trivial amount of fat” according to the manufacturer. How can it be fat free if FAT is the first ingredient in the product??? Then you look at a serving size of PAM, it is 1/3 of a second spray. Now, if you are an Olympic 100m sprinter, 0.33 seconds is an eternity and can differentiate the gold medal winner from the competitor in last place, but for the average consumer, I can almost bet that the average spray on your pan to make eggs or to coat your baking pan is about 3 seconds. Now, a one second spray has 7 calories in it, which is almost a full gram of fat (wait, what happened to the no fat, no calorie claim?). This means you just added almost 3 grams of fat and 21 calories to your diet. Again, it might not seem like much, but all of those calories add up! Your fat free cooking is no longer fat free.

Now on to the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spray. I just got done competing in a figure competition and this spray was tremendously popular among the competitors. They had their protein pancakes with so much of this spray on it that I thought it was going to run off of their pancake and down their arm (which I suppose could be useful to help them oil up before going on stage). They find this product very satisfying while there are dieting and trying to cut fat out of their diet. What they don’t realize that this product could also be sabotaging the body they have worked so hard to attain.

In this product, the second ingredient is fat, and while 5 sprays contains less than one gram of fat, think about how many sprays you put on your foods. My clients, like most people, tend to go a little overboard when they think they are consuming something that won’t add many calories or fat to their diet. And 5 sprays become 15, and they have just added another 3 grams of fat and 27 calories to their daily intake.

Take Control of Your Food Intake

While it is the marketer’s job to sell you the product (even if that means bending the truth), you don’t have to be a victim to crafty marketing pitches. With just a few changes in the way your approach eating, you can take control of your food intake so that your nutritional plan supports your weight loss goals.

If you are anything like me, I LOVE to eat, and I snack all day to keep my metabolism high and blood sugar levels steady. However, almost everything I consume is fresh. Fresh fruits, fresh veggies, lean meats and eggs. The marketers can’t fool you with these foods because there are no labels. What you see is what you get. You can get on free internet sites like www.nutritiondata.com or www.fitday.com and track all of your food. You can even enter your favorite foods from restaurants and the website will tell you EXACTLY how many calories, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins you are consuming.

This way, you know what you are eating. You don’t necessarily have to cut out your “fun foods” ( I don’t like using the phrase “cheat foods” because of psychological topics we will explore in another article), but you can monitor how much of these foods you include in your diet so that they don’t sabotage your efforts in the gym.