Learn to read and interpret food labels

If you want to take your health into your own hands and eat consciously by adopting habits such as fasting, intermittent fasting and ketogenic eating, it is important to learn to read and interpret food labels in order to avoid letting ingredients that can spoil your process, whether it be weight loss, excess fat accumulation, high sugar levels, etc., through the web.

Today we will learn how food labels can guide us to avoid ingredients, such as hidden sugars, ending up on our plates, sabotaging our efforts to eat healthy.

On the back of many packages and jars you will find a white label with black letters indicating the “nutritional information” of what the food in question contains.

Immediately below, you will find the serving size information and number of servings per container or per package.

Let's take for example a sugar-free chocolate bar that weighs 100 grams.

According to the label, the serving size is 1/3 of the bar, i.e. 33g. This suggests that for a person who consumes about 2000 calories daily, 1/3 of this bar (190 calories) would be enough to not exceed the daily caloric intake.

Furthermore, the information on the label regarding carbohydrates, fats and proteins refers to one serving.  In some cases, but not all, you will also find information on the total content. In this case, eating the entire 100-gram bar would correspond to 570 calories.

Total carbohydrate content

When following intermittent fasting and/or a ketogenic protocol, both the amount and type of carbohydrates consumed are crucial.

Total carbohydrates are listed in bold to make them stand out and are measured in grams (g). Sugar, starch, and plant fiber make up the total carbohydrates listed on the label. Sugar is listed separately. All of these carbohydrates except dietary fiber raise your blood sugar. blood.

On the other hand, if you have diabetes and count carbohydrates to calculate the insulin doses you have to produce  and that's what the American Diabetes Association recommends: The total amount of carbohydrates listed on the label helps you estimate how much insulin you'll produce. Some people get better results if they subtract the number of grams of dietary fiber from the number of total carbohydrates . Subtracting the amount of dietary fiber leaves you with what's known as net carbs.

Although fiber is a carbohydrate, it does not increase insulin production. In fact, it is digested by colon bacteria without causing an increase in insulin.

When it comes to net sugars, we want to keep our intake as low as possible . So when we're faced with a nutrition label, we should focus on the total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, and sugars or net carbs content.

Remember that if we are following a ketogenic protocol, we should not consume more than 25-50 grams of net carbohydrates per day to keep blood sugar under control.

Equally important is the type of carbohydrates consumed.  If you get your carbs from refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup or other high blood sugar sweeteners, it's going to be harder for your body to get into ketosis.

Substances or ingredients that are used to sweeten supposedly “sugar-free” products, but actually affect blood sugar.

• Dextrose (synthetic sugar)
• Maltodextrin
• Corn fiber (virtually all corn and soy are genetically modified, unless the label specifies that it is organic).
• Tapioca which is a starch.
• Wheat (it is quite allergenic and should be avoided especially by sensitive people)
• Gluten (allergen for many people)
• Sugar

Other sweeteners you may find,

• Aspartame , this sweetener will not take you out of your ketosis state, it does not cause an insulin response but it is not the indicated sweetener. In addition, it is an exitotoxin (excitatory neurotoxin) in the same way as monosodium glutamate that can freely penetrate certain brain regions and rapidly destroy neurons by hyperactivating the NMDA (N-Methyl D- Aspartate) subtype of the Glutamine receptor.
• Sucrose is refined sugar, of course it causes an insulin response.
• Sucralose , also known as Splenda, contains maltodextrin, which causes an insulin response.
• Honey . Honey contains fructose and is processed differently than other foods, reaching the liver and facilitating its absorption as fat.
• Agave . Although its glycemic index is low, it follows a process similar to that of fructose, facilitating its absorption as fat.
• Isomaltose , as with other sugar alcohols, is fermented in the colon bacteria and causes inflammation, in many cases laxative effects. It is best to avoid this product, as well as Maltitol and other polyalcohols.
• Acesulfame K. It is a calorie-free sweetener 200 times sweeter than sugar, which indicates that it hyper-stimulates neurotoxins in the brain.

Sweeteners you can use without breaking your ketogenic protocol:

• Stevia , although it can produce a minimal insulin response, has been found to also help eliminate sodium from the body.
• Monkfruit or luo han guo . In addition to sweetening, it provides antioxidants; it reduces the production of FN-kB (nuclear factor kappa B), iL6 (interleukin 6) and Cox2 (cyclooxygenase 2)
• Erythritol is a safe sweetener because 90% is absorbed before reaching the intestine. It is not as sweet as sugar or some of the sweeteners that stimulate neurotoxins in the brain and consequently inflammatory response.
• Glycerol . It is used as a natural sweetener because it is hydrophilic (its presence attracts water). If you consume something with glycerol, it will bring water from the extracellular space to that area, thus keeping it hydrated. It has no effect on blood sugar nor does it cause an insulin reaction.

List of ingredients on the food label and what it means

Usually the first ingredient is what the product is primarily made of.

To return to the chocolate bar, it is mainly composed of cocoa paste, cocoa butter, defatted cocoa powder and sweetened mainly with Maltitol.

Other products contain mainly soy and The ingredients that follow will only be present in small quantities. This is the case with salad dressings or even mayonnaise.

We can find dressings or other sauces that claim to contain olive oil, but when we carefully review the ingredients we find that the base is soybean oil and/or a mixture of soybean oil with olive, canola and sunflower oil, for example.

As many people have begun to become aware of certain ingredients such as monosodium glutamate, which is a flavor enhancer with neurotoxic effects ( study ), they have now come up with the idea of ​​adding modified starch, but be aware that it is the same monosodium glutamate.

If you are looking for keto-friendly products, check the ingredients carefully. Some products may contain low concentrations of carbohydrates, but think carefully about whether these are the types of ingredients you want in your body.