Original Article published in Italian in Gazzetta dello Sport 02.21.2021
By Sabrina Commis
There are simple guidelines we can follow when we try to interpret food labels while grocery shopping. Let’s take a look and see what we can put in our shopping cart.
It is not always easy to understand what food labels mean when we go grocery shopping. “We often get lost among many additives, dyes, preservatives, antioxidants, and various agents,with generic names that are often unknown and incomprehensible” explains Dr. Romina Cervigni, nutritional biologist and Scientific Director of the Fondazione Valter Longo. A few practical tips are enough to help us decipher all the information and know exactly what to put into our shopping cart. Packaging is often a bad indictor, as it can deceive the eye and lead us to buy the one that looks more appealing. It is better to stick to the ingredients list-that never lies. When we don’t know what we are eating, we put ourselves at risk of emotional, energetic, physical, or even psychological risks because the additives contained in some products can be dangerous to health. Several studies have shown that we consume an average of 155.5mg of additives per day per kg of body weight, or approximately 4kg per year. Modified starches, mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, or sodium nitrate are those that can be harmful to our health. Don’t be fooled and follow the following tips.
GROCERY SHOPPING
“If there are more than five ingredients listed, that is not a good sign. Avoid foods that contain 10 or more. A single password: buy natural products, lightly processed, and low in food additives even if they improve the taste, texture, visual appearance, and allow it to last longer. It is better to identify those with a short shelf life, perhaps get used to smaller but frequent expenses.”
KNOWING FOODS
“To buy better, you need to know foods in its natural state. For example, dried apricots are not bright, shiny orange, but rather white; cooked ham and salmon are gray. Be well informed and go to stores you can trust. If possible, do some online research and get a qualitative point of view.”
FIRST ON THE LIST
“The ingredients are listed in order of importance: the earlier it is listed, the larger the quantity in the products. If sugar is listed as the number one ingredient, especially if it is a dietary product, we should avoid it. The first ingredients must be those of the original recipe. For a cake, for example, flour should be listed as number one.”
WATCH OUT FOR DECEITFUL PACAKGING
“Let’s go further than what meets the eye and pay attention to what matters: we should choose a product not by the packaging but by the content and quality. In this way we will avoid giving into temptations and harming our health.
