Is "Low Fat" healthier?

The dreaded and awful fat (formally called lipids) ... 

Unfortunately we have been misinformed about the power of this nutrient in our lives.  It is a fact that we suffer more illnesses because of sugar than fat.

Did you know that they are essential for the proper functioning of the brain, hormone production and energy reserves? Many vitamins are dissolved in fat, thus by eliminating them completely you will also miss antioxidants and immune protection.

Be careful of foods that say "fat free" because in most cases the fat is replaced with corn starch, fructose or sugar cane, making the food even more damaging.

Nutritional fact labels describe several types of fat: total, saturated, trans and cholesterol. 

In order to find the healthiest option, choose food with less than 20g of fat and less than 20mg cholesterol per serving.

See you next week!

Understanding nutritional labels... PROTEINS

How did you do last week? Aren’t you impressed with the amount of sugar we often consume in instant food?

Fortunately there are new natural options that are as sweet but harmless to your body ...

We continue with proteins:

 

Few industrialized food contains enough of this nutrient and even less offer a good quality protein such as soy, cheese, eggs or meat.

To give you a reference, an average adult should eat about 60g of protein per day, which is 100-200g of meat, egg or cheese (much less than what we usually consume). 

Desserts don’t contain enough protein, but if you are used to buying one or more meals per day, choose those options that give you about 20-25g of protein per serving.

See you next week!

Reading labels in ten seconds... CARBOHYDRATES

The mistakenly called “enemies of your diet” and the reason for your cravings ... "carbohydrates".

This nutrient has been widely criticized in recent decades, however if you stop eating them, your body uses muscle tissue to get energy, so will you lose weight by losing tone and strength. Besides, carbohydrates are the most important fuel for brain function.

As you can see, nutrition fact labels divide the total amount of carbohydrates in two: sugars and fiber. 

Sugars refer to the amount of digestible carbohydrates that convert to glucose in your body. 

Fiber refers to the portion of carbohydrates which is not digestible but that helps the proper function of your bowel.

As I have written before, avoid food that contains fructose or HFCS as they have been increasingly associated with the epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

It is generally recommended that less than 10% of your diet is sugar, therefore a practical measure is to choose food that contains less than 50g per portion of sugar.

See you next week...

Do you REALLY know what you eat?

For those who did not read last week’s blog, we will learn a simple and quick way to read nutrition labels so we can choose the best food for our family.

This week we'll talk about Energy:

As you may have noticed, the amount of energy is listed at the beginning of the nutrition facts label and most of them specify the amount of calories per serving (which in most cases is less than half the package).

An average adult needs to eat 1500-2000kcal per day, so that each meal it is advisable to have 500-700Kcal (considering breakfast, lunch and dinner).

According to the above, you need to choose meals with less than 500Kcal per serving, if you're buying a dessert, avoid options that have more than 200Kcal per serving.

Try applying this on the foodstuff you usually buy and tell me how it went.

See you next week with "Carbohydrates"