Nutrition Facts

I, personally, am a stickler for ingredients. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to eat foods comprised of actual food. While a name that sounds daunting may be a red flag, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not wholesome. "Ascorbic acid" sounds fishy, no? Well, it's just a fancy name for vitamin C, which happens to be an effective food preservative. The same goes for "tocopherols," which are merely components of vitamin E. Conversely, nothing sounds simpler than "corn syrup." Buyers beware. I tend to prefer yogurts with the "fruit at the bottom," since they are generally not infused with artificial food colorants, but that's just me. Not all food coloring is harmful. Beta carotene (the water precursor to Vitamin A) is your friend. Red #40? Not so much.

Getting to know a few basic components of nutrition can go a long way. Let's take a look at bread, for instance. One of the major aspects of bread that I consider is its fiber content. This is another area where buying a food for its color can be misleading. Some "whole grain" products do not give you one of the major elements you may be counting on them to provide, fiber. Fiber constitutes the "roughage" factor of foods. We all need an ample amount of it to be "regular." If faced with choosing between two breads, one of which contains less than 1 gram of fiber per slice and another which is slightly more expensive, providing 3 g of fiber per slice, you are likely getting your money's worth to splurge. You may not be able to purchase every single top-of-the-line product you might like to afford, but if you look at your food labels, you may find ways to compromise cost without compromising quality.

Looking at the sugar content of foods is another smart move, from a nutritional standpoint. While our cells need sugars to produce energy, that which comes from an apple is certainly going to provide a more sustained release of energy than a quick blast from a sugar-laden apple juice. This is where the idea of carbohydrates comes into play. One of the advantages of "complex" carbohydrates is that their complexity makes them a little more challenging for our bodies to process. This means that as our bodies convert carbohydrates to sugars, which is the unlocking of "energy" from foods, our bodies burn more calories and experience longer bursts of energy. Simply put, simple carbohydrates are burned up more quickly than complex carbohydrates. While you may not wish to eat a bowl of steamed oat groats for breakfast every morning play Online Games, avoiding cereals devoid of fiber and high in sugars is probably a good idea.

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