Comparing Food Labels 101: Understanding the Nutrition of Bread

In Canada, food manufacturers are required to state nutritional facts on their packaging. Food labels are found on the backside of the packages and list important details like nutrient information, calories and food ingredients. Understanding how to read and compare food labels will help you make more informed and healthy food choices.

Calories: How Many Are In A Serving, And How Many Are You Actually Consuming?

When comparing food labels to determine the nutrition of bread options, one thing to look for is calorie count. Depending on your needs, you may require a higher calorie count or you may need to limit your caloric intake. Consumers should understand their daily caloric needs to make informed food choices. When looking at labels, keep in mind that calories are based per serving size - for bread a serving size could be one, two or more slices of bread. Pay close attention to what your label says to make sure you know how many calories you will be consuming.

How To Determine The Most Essential Nutrients

Food labels also contain nutrition facts tables which include recommended daily values. These are important because they not only show which vitamins and minerals are included, but other important information such as fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugar and protein levels. This information is especially important for those shoppers with special dietary needs. In taking your own eating habits into consideration, you can choose foods that are sources of nutrients you may be lacking. For example, if you need more fibre or iron you might look to whole grain bread or white bread sources. You can also avoid saturated fats or cholesterol by comparing bread brands to find the lowest amount per serving size.

No Added Chemical Additives and Artificial Preservative Free

Just as important as the nutritional facts tables are ingredient listings. Knowing what is in your food enables you to make informed decisions. Some breads may contain artificial preservatives and other added chemical additives to extend shelf life or make bread last longer. There are options available that are made with simple, real ingredients and without these artificial extras or high fructose corn syrup. You can also look for unbleached wheat flour in white and whole wheat breads for its higher nutritional value

When it comes to the nutrition of bread, not all breads are created equal. Consumers who are aware of the nutritional information can make informed decisions by reading food labels and making choices that best fit the needs of their families.

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Posted in: Bread,Comparing,Labels,Nutrition,Understanding

Infant Nutrition With Organic Foods

Infants need baby food just as adults need their favorite food. But baby nutrition has been deeply affected by the growth of non-organic foods. The concept of organically produced foods has caught wind in the past decade, tracing its emergence to the mid 1990's. Would you like it if somebody told you to drink a gallon of nitrate fertilizer: would you even do it? Well, you might be shocked to know you might have consumed more than a gallon after eating fertilizer-laden produce for all your life. The concept of fertilizer was used to get rid of pests and insects in the soil. They destroyed the crops and so fertilizer industries blossomed all over the place.

But the same tool that got rid of the insects has now turned its fire on the human population. Years of crops smothered with fertilizer makes the fertilizer go right down into the soil. The soil holds this fertilizer for years which makes it all the more harmful as the fertilizer is now expired and has become downright deadly to grow any more crops in.

Ripple effect

Chemically potent soil gives rise to chemically harmful crops. If you remember your school science, you will recollect that roots absorb mineral salts and water from the soil. If the soil is tinged with nitrates, the water will be tinged with nitrates too. This alarming transplanting of chemicals affects the crops grown; this deadly crop travels down to the supermarkets in trucks and finally sits in our shopping bags to come home with us.

Fertilizers are used to boost crop outputs. Large crop outputs lead to big money. So the obsession with making money has led to the sacrifice of health. A carrot or an apple today is scientifically proven to contain only 50% of the nutrition it used to hold about 50 years back - which means you think you're eating a wholesome carrot but you are not. What you are eating is a carrot look-alike - with nitrates in it.

Effect on meat

Animals that live on the farm graze on the grass there which means they also get contaminated. Then again in a lot of farms dairy and poultry animals are force-fed with anti-biotic medicine to increase production of milk and eggs. Disease can also spread from eating such farm products. When these animals die, they decompose into the soil and leave the remnants of the anti-biotic and the chemically eaten grass back into the soil; and the story begins all over again. So meat, milk and poultry products are not exempt either.

Organic baby food

With adults in danger, it makes it imperative to make babies safe from this kind of chemical attack. Babies need to be fed only with organic baby snacks like Earth's Best products to protect them from diseases. Babies' bodies are delicate and vulnerable to disease as their physical systems are still in the early stages of development. The parents may buy baby food unsuspectingly from the supermarket, but that might not be natural baby food at all but baby food prepared with the same chemically treated ingredients.

Real dangers from eating chemically treated crops

The list of diseases that can spring up from eating fertilizer doused crops begins with cancer. The growing number of cancer cases all over the world is a strong pointer to this. Other diseases related to increased chemical toxicity in the body are obesity and Alzheimer's disease.

Turning back the clock

Now luckily due to growing awareness, every supermarket has organic sections where organic produce is displayed for purchase. Organic food refers to crops grown without fertilizers. Naturally these crops are more expensive as the organic farms strive to produce crops without artificially inflating their rate of growth. But if this extra money means a healthier body with an improved immune system then the money is an investment not expenditure. Perhaps this explains why people of olden days lived longer and healthier lives though the medical facilities were not so far advanced back then. They didn't need the medication!

Perhaps it's time to undo some of the negative effects of modernization and turn back to the good old methods of farming.

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Posted in: Foods,Infant,Nutrition,Organic