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Writer's pictureRamsey Bergeron

How to Read a Nutrition Label


Do you know what you are looking for when reading nutritional labeling? In this video we will discuss some basic thing to keep in mind when you go shopping for groceries.

audio: "

Hi I'm Ramsey Bergeron of Bergeron Personal Training here in Scottsdale Arizona and today I'm going to teach you how to read the nutritional information on the food that you're eating.

70% of the results that you're going to get are going to come from your diet, so even if you're exercising every day, if you aren't fuelling correctly you're not going to get any results. So I'm going to show you where in the packaging to look for that nutritional information, what's the important information on there that you need to see, and what are the buzzwords that you may find on the front of the packaging that really don't mean anything.

So while I'm driving to the grocery store to show you some things, I'm going to talk about some buzz words that don't mean anything on the way. The first one is "all-natural." All-natural just means minimally processed, there's really no standard for what that means. It's entirely up to the company and the USDA doesn't regulate it. Don't be fooled by thinking that it's healthy for you. The second is "gluten-free,"

Unless you have Celiac's disease, gluten really has no impact in your diet. I personally like a low carb diet. Gluten may be higher in carbohydrates,but it's not going to be negatively beneficial for your health unless you have celiacs or perhaps Crohn's disease, so keep that in mind.

Another buzz word you want to be careful about is "low fat" or "no fat" usually foods that are lower in fat are also a lot higher in carbohydrates which can really affect your blood sugar. When you're buying your poultry or even pork if you see "hormone free," that means nothing. Hormones have actually been banned for poultry and pork in the country for a while, so all poultry you're gonna get is gonna be hormone free. So that's a buzzword, don't let it fool you.

Alright, welcome to the grocery store. Now we're gonna find some different food items and look at the nutritional information. One of the things we're going to talk about is the sugar content of food and what it means when you see different numbers on there. We're gonna look at one now and look at the sugar content. When you see a package of food like this it can be a little misleading. You see down here the nutritional information on the front, that's not really the nutritional information in full for the packaging or what the FDA requires. To get that you got to flip it over to the back here and look. This is what the standard nutritional facts information looks like for food, and if you look here we look at total carbohydrates. It says 33 and dietary fiber is 6 grams of fiber there so to get your total sugars you're going to subtract 6 from 33 so your actually looking at 27 grams of sugar. That's gonna be the net effect on the bloodstream, not what it says right there. The 15 grams of sugar listed.

Now let's look at "all-natural." You see it says "all-natural" here with the asterisk after it, so if you look down at the bottom, it says "minimally processed no artificial ingredients" but up here it's 15% chicken broth, salt, and natural flavor. Not real appetizing. Here, look at this cereal. We have here 9 grams of protein 8 grams of fiber. Must be healthy, right? Well let's take a look at the side. Here is the actual nutritional information. Total carbohydrates: 38 per serving only 8 thats fiber so there's 30 grams of sugar that's gonna be hitting your bloodstream, right there from this one alone. There's another great example up here of the whole thing with "hormones" out of the foods so if you like this bacon, it says "pork made without added hormones" but then look underneath it. Federal regulations prohibit the use of this. It's absolutely worthless.

I hope you learned something today. I'm going to be uploading a lot more detailed videos of fitness and nutrition tips to this page. Also feel free to check out my webpage at www.Bergerontraining.com for coaching or remote training advice."

Ramsey Bergeron owns and operates Bergeron Personal Training in Scottsdale, AZ. He is an NASM CPT, 7 time Ironman, and former spokesperson for a national suppliment company. He has been seen in Men's Health Magazine among other periodicals and over 40 million newspapers across the country. He is also an expert contributor to various online fitness articles. He also founded Bergeron Adventure Travel which he uses to motivate clients to by preparing them for and leading them on hikes and trips around the world. Having led groups over the Inca Trail in Peru and the Milford Sound in New Zealand, he is currently planning a trip for his clients in 2018 to hike the Lysefjord in Norway.

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