How do you cut through the hype and bolgna that many manufacturers use to confuse consumers?  The easiest way to do that is: KEEP IT SUPER SIMPLE!  Always check the label of a food item before you toss it into your shopping cart.  The front of every package is well thought out and can, at times, be verrrrrrrry trricky.  Just because the front of a bag says: "NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP!" it doesn't mean that it is sugar free.  Even though there are arguably better sugars than others, sugar is sugar is sugar. 

I checked out the ingredients on a plastic bag enclosing a loaf of bread that had a lot of consumer appeal.  It claimed: "NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP!" but there were THREE other kinds of sugar in the ingredients: brown sugar, molasses, and dextrose!  There were 7 grams of sugar and only 1 gram of fiber.  Jeez!  I glanced over at the label of my favorite kind of bread (Ezekiel) and there were 0 grams of sugar and 3 grams of fiber.  Love it!  Keep it simple everyone.  The less ingredients, the better.  And, remember, if you cannot pronounce an ingredient your body probably won't like it.

Here are some things to search for when looking at labels:

• more fiber than sugar (fiber is a negligible carbohydrate!  Gotta LOVE that!)
• 10 ingredients or LESS! (if the list of ingredients looks more like a paragraph instead of a sentence, move on to something else!)
• servings per container (the nutrition facts are for ONE serving only, pay attention to that!)
• check out the fat content and search for items that are generous in mono- and polyunsaturated fats vs. saturated fats (almonds, avocados, flax seeds, sunflower seed butter, etc.)
• make sure that there is a nice balance between the total grams of fat, carbs, and protein (an imbalance would look something like this: Total fat: 1 gram, Total carbs: 42 grams, Total fiber: 1 gram, Total protein: 4 grams.  Instead, look for more of a balance like this: Total fat: 5 grams, Total carbs: 22 grams, Total fiber: 6 grams, Total protein: 10 grams)

Those valuable labels