Your Childrens Health

Choosing healthy foods for yourself and your family is important but sometimes complicated.  The labels on cans and packages can tell you a lot about the foods you buy.  Here are some helpful hints for getting the most nutritious food you can for yourself and your toddler or child:

*Food labels tell you how much fat, sugar, and salt are in the product.  They also show how many calories are in the food per serving and what amount is an average serving size.

*The first ingredient list is its primary ingredient and that ingredient is the greatest one of the ingredients: all other ingredients are “lesser” ingredients, compared to the first ingredient listed.

For example: If a cereal lists sugar before a grain, it will contain more sugar than grain (and less grain than sugar).

*The label will tell you how many grams of fat the food contains per serving and what type of fat it contains.

*Unsaturated fats are better for you than saturated fats.

*Your total fat calories should not be more than 25-30 percent of the calories you eat for the day.

For example: if you eat 2000 calories in a day only 600 should be fat calories.

*Food labels will include information about food additives and also specific ingredients.  It is recommended you limit your intake of some ingredients; such as the flavor enhancer MSG, red dyes and salt.

Read food labels s you can be more sure you are buying and serving food with the highest nutritional value for yourself and your toddler or child.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 4th, 2006 at 6:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Pregnancy and Newborns, Obesity, Adolescence, Diet and Nutrition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.