Reading the Label; part I

Last weekend I traveled up-state to Hudson, New York to spend the weekend volunteering at a Plant-Strong immersion get-away with the stars of Forks Over Knives. The speaker list consisted of an all-star cast, including author of the Engine 2 Diet, Rip Esselstyn, author of the ground-breaking study How to Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, The China Study author, Dr. Colin Campbell, Jeff Novick who is one of the most impressive Dietary Nutritionists I’ve ever met and finally one of the most inspiring plant-based athletes and my friend, Rich Roll among others. 

The weekend proved to be a great inspiration. I sat in on lectures about how to reverse heart disease, how oil and other fats harm and damage our endophilia cells, two different cooking classes and much more. Ann Esselstyn even personally taught me the best and most efficient way to strip kale from it’s stem. However, the most important lesson I was able to take away from the weekend was when Jeff Novick, MS, RD, LD, LN taught the group how to read a nutrition label.

There is an old joke about how vegan means expert ingredient reader. And they are. Long term vegans are excellent at spotting the smallest trace amounts of any animal products listed in the ingredients. As I’ve argued in the past, all animal products should be completely removed from the diet. This includes meats, dairy, eggs, and fish. These are devoid of micro nutrients but more importantly have been demonstrated in study after study to be harmful in overall long term health as well as greatly increasing the risk of contracting most of America’s most deadly diseases including heart disease, cancer (just about every form), and diabetes. Since I am a vegan, I always assumed I knew what to look for when evaluating a product, however, I never realized how little I knew about these very tricky black and white charts.

At one time or another we’ve all looked at the package and attempted to decipher these. But three little tricks Jeff Novick taught me makes distinguishing between healthy and fraudulent a breeze.

We will analyze those tricky charts in part II. First we need to understand how to read the ingredient list. Never, excuse me, NEVER trust anything found on the front of the package. It is amazing what companies can get away with through their advertising on the front of their packaging. Things like “Fat Free,” “Multi-Grain,” and “All Natural” are all common catch words found on the front of packaged foods to make the consumer think they are getting something they are not.

Any time a product lists any type of oil it is an instant clue the product contains fat. Be especially weary of the word hydrogenated oil and partially hydrogenated oil as this is a sign that the product contains saturated fat and sometimes even trans fat (this is particularly the case in “High Heat” cooking oils). Even more outrageous, due to a loophole in labeling laws, companies are legally allowed to hide harmful fats in their products and still list it as having 0 grams of fat on the nutrition label. This is because any time a product has less than .5 g they can legally round that number down to zero. Pam is an excellent example of this.  Despite the fact that the product is 100% fat (much of it saturated fat), the company is legally able to claim their product is “fat free” simply by making the serving size so incredibly small (.266 g or 1/3 of a second of spray) that the product serving size will contain less than .5 g of fats. Hence they round that number down to zero and bippity boppity boo you get “Fat Free Cooking!”  (check out this article for news about a recent law suit over this practice)

Unfortunately, we can’t even trust words like “All Natural,” “Multi-Grain,” “Made with Wheat” or even “Made with Whole Wheat.” The phrase “All Natural” simply means the product started with a natural source. After processing there may not be a single trace of that natural source left, but hey, it’s all natural! The same thing goes for “Multi-grain” and “Whole wheat” labels found on the front of the packaging. Instead, search for the words “Whole,” “Rolled,” “Stone Ground,” or “Cracked” in the ingredient list. One of these words should be directly followed by the word “wheat.” Be sure to avoid products that just list “wheat,” “white,” “Durum,” “Semolina,” “Bleached,” “Unbleached,” or “Enriched” as these are all code words for white flour, which has been so heavily processed nearly all of it’s nutrients have been stripped away, leaving empty calories and damaging oxidants (think the opposite of antioxidants).

Back to Nature Organic Stoneground Wheat Crackers were the example Jeff used because the front of their package looks incredibly healthy. But a closer look at the ingredient list shows their claims on the front to be only partly true.

If you enlarge the picture, company appears to have listed the ingredients right on the front of the package, accordingly, these crackers are made from “Organic Stone Ground Wheat, Organic Safflower Oil, Organic Whole Wheat Flakes, Organic Whole Brown Flax Seed and Sea Salt.” However, when you compare what the front of the box claims to be made from with the actual ingredients….

“Ingredients: ORGANIC UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), ORGANIC SAFFLOWER OIL, ORGANIC GROUND WHEAT FLOUR, ORGANIC WHEAT FLAKES, ORGANIC WHOLE BROWN FLAX SEED, ORGANIC EVAPORATED CANE JUICE, ORGANIC BROWN RICE SYRUP, SEA SALT, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), ORGANIC BARLEY MALT EXTRACT, SOY LECITHIN. CONTAINS: WHEAT, SOY.”   (the companies page can be found here).

Hopefully you notice two things. First, several ingredients were not included on the front of the box, including the very first ingredient, which is organic and unbleached enriched flour. In other words, this product is mostly white flour! The second ingredient is oil or 100% fat and then followed by more white flour, then white flour flakes and then finally we get "whole brown flax seed." Just based off this knowledge, we now know to put these crackers back on the shelf and continue shopping.

To reemphasize the first part of our lesson, ignore the front and read the ingredients. Your body will thank you! Go and try this in your pantry or any grocery store. You will be amazed at what you find. Next week I will post more about how to read the Nutrition Facts Label so be sure to check back.

Cheers,

For more information check out Jeff Novick’s DVD lecture “Should I Eat That” or Rip Esselstyn’s book The Engine 2 Diet.