Day 4 - Eating Clean Mini Challenge

Day 4: Read ingredients – I challenge you to open up your cupboards and read the ingredients lists on your processed foods.  What surprises you?  What ingredients are you unsure of?  Comment in our Facebook Event  with the ingredients you are surprised to find, want more information on or want to share with the group. 

The only way to know if an item is clean/real food is to read the ingredients lists on the back of everything.  Not the Nutritional facts that tell you how many grams of this and that, the list of what's actually in the product! You know the list that comes after the word Ingredients: Why is this list more important than the list nutritional facts?  

Nutrition Facts Table Vs. Ingredients List

Nutrition Facts Table

The information in a nutrition facts table is based on the serving size. Serving size can be found at the top of the nutrition facts table.

You can use a nutrition facts table to compare the serving size to the amount of food you actually eat. For example, the serving size of bread in a nutrition facts table could be 1 slice. But if you eat 2 slices, you need to double the amount of calories and nutrients.

Ingredients List

The ingredient list shows all the ingredients in a packaged food.

Ingredients are listed in order of weight, beginning with the ingredient that weighs the most and ending with the ingredient that weighs the least. This means that a food contains more of the ingredients found at the beginning of the list, and less of the ingredients at the end of the list.

Example: The ingredient list below is for bran cereal. The ingredient that is present in the largest amount is whole wheat, and the ingredient present in the smallest amount is minerals.

Ingredients: Whole wheat, wheat bran, sugar/glucose-fructose, salt, malt (corn flour, malted barley), vitamins (thiamine hydrochloride, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, d-calcium pantothenate),minerals (iron, zinc oxide).

Ingredients with many names

Sometimes nutrients like saturated and trans fats, sodium, and sugar appear on ingredient lists under many different names. Here's a list of the most commonly used terms.

Commonly used terms

Nutrient	Other names
Saturated fat	Bacon Beef fat Butter Chicken fat Cocoa butter Coconut or coconut oil Hydrogenated fats and oils Lard Palm or palm kernel oil Powdered whole milk solids Shortening Suet Tallow
Trans fat	Hard margarine Hydrogenated fats and oils Partially hydrogenated fats and oils Shortening
Sodium	Baking powder Baking soda Brine Celery salt Disodium phosphate Garlic salt Monosodium glutamate (MSG) Onion salt Salt Sodium alginate Sodium benzoate Sodium bisulfate Sodium proprionate Soy sauce
Sugar	Brown sugar Cane juice extract Corn syrup Demerara or Turbinado sugar Dextrose Evaporated cane juice Fructose Galactose Glucose Glucose-fructose High-fructose corn syrup Honey Invert sugar Lactose Liquid sugar Maltose Molasses Sucrose Syrup Treacle Tip: A word ending in "ose" is usually sugar.

I did a blog post a few months back about Purging the pantry and what ingredients to look out for as well as how the ingredients are listed and how to de-code the lists. Find my Purge the Pantry Blog post here.