As mindful parents, I imagine that you have tried to decipher a nutrition label on a food package in order to determine if the product was healthy or not. Odds are that after studying this label you were still unsure. You may be unsure because most consumers in the United States don’t have a visual reference for grams and milligrams, which is the unit of measure used on the nutrition label.
There is a daily value, given in a percentage, for many of the components of a food product. For instance, a serving of cinnamon grahams, listed as 2.5 cracker or 30 grams is as follows: Fat 6%, Cholesterol 0%, sodium 3%, total carbohydrates 18%. So if the upper most limit of any of these components for the day is 100%, you know how much you are consuming when you eat 2.5 grahams.
You may notice that total carbohydrate is broken down into two smaller components, fiber 2% and sugar 6g. Fiber is given in a percentage, sugar as grams. Why isn’t sugar listed as teaspoons, a measure most of us have some familiarity with? Perhaps because some food manufacturer would rather you not know how much sugar is in their product. Look at a box of cereal, how many grams of sugar are in a serving? What about yogurt, or 100% Fruit juice.
There are 4 grams in a teaspoon. Now look at your cereal, yogurt, juice or other favorite food. Surprised? Many cereals have over 9 grams of sugar per serving, that’s 2 teaspoons per listed serving, usually ¾ or ½ cup. Many flavored yogurts have 30 grams of sugar per 6 ounce cup. Would you serve your child a cup of tea with 7 teaspoons of sugar? Even juice, where all the sugar is “naturally occurring”, not added, is a concentrated source of sugar.
So mindful parents are not only mindful with their children, they are mindful when choosing foods.
Beverly Pressey is a Registered Dietician with Master’s degrees in Education and Nutrition. She is in her 99h year as a Nutrition Educator at Bellevue College and her 5th with a community Parenting Center. Previously she was a nutritionist with the Seattle/King County Department of Health, working with child care staff and parents. Beverly has also worked with individuals, presented at conferences, taught continuing education and college classes, and presented at numerous parent groups. As an experienced counselor, cook, teacher, speaker and a mother of 2, she has a realistic understanding of infant/child eating patterns plus the perspective of a busy parent. Beverly lives in Seattle, Washington.
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