Hello, hello, and welcome to today's episode of the Rev Up Health Podcast. Today we're talking about reading food labels. This topic came up because in our Ask Us Anything episode there were a lot of questions about food. We talk to patients all the time about food and how to fuel your body, but we've never really done a discussion about reading a label.
We always have a lot of discussion with our patients about protein, fiber, fat, and carbohydrates, but it's really the labels on the back of these products that give you a lot of the information. That's where you'll find your information about clean food.
The Front Is Marketing, the Back Is Information
We've talked about this before: if it doesn't have a label, that's fantastic — it means it's clean. There's no label on a head of lettuce you pick out of the garden. But what we want to get across today is that the front of the box, the front of the package, is for marketing and advertisement. The back is where the legal, documented information actually lives.
As a child of the '80s, those front labels were a really big deal with diet and nutrition, because that was the time of the fat-free craze. If it said fat-free, that was great — you just put it in your cart. Or "made with real ingredients," or "naturally flavored," or "made with natural products," so it must be healthy. You hear a lot of that stuff, and it can be deceiving.
Recently there was a change in rules by the FDA where companies now have to have nutritional backing to call foods "healthy." To say something is a healthy item on the front of the package, it has to be backed up by the nutritional data on the back. That process is changing and takes effect in 2028, so you'll still find things that aren't quite in line with this — it's a time of transition.
Words That Mean Nothing
The front of the package is the old area with the nice colorful stuff that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy that you're doing the right thing. But a lot of the words they use on the front mean absolutely nothing — it's more of a marketing thing.
- **Natural** — how many times have we seen "natural" on the front of a package? There's no formal FDA definition for it; it's barely regulated. It doesn't mean it's organic, pesticide-free, or even minimally processed. - **Natural flavoring** — another catchall that actually tells you the product is processed. - **Made with real fruit** — can be true, but that includes fruit concentrates. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but "made with real fruit" makes you think it's healthy with clean ingredients, and that's not always the case. - **Multigrain** — just means there's more than one grain. It doesn't tell you anything about the whole product. - **No high-fructose corn syrup** — usually means there's some other kind of sugar in there; they just swapped it out. Sometimes that's good, but don't let it sell you. - **Plant-based** — doesn't necessarily mean it's good for you; it's also just marketing. - **Clean, wholesome, and nutritious** — there really aren't any definitions for what these mean.
Words That Are Regulated
So what words are regulated? **USDA Organic** is a real certification with real standards. **Low sodium** is regulated — it means it's either a good source, high in, or reduced, depending on what's on the label. You can often find condensed soups in a low-sodium variety, and beans often come low-sodium.
And the word **healthy** is changing definitions, which is where that 2028 change comes in. The old definition of "healthy" was written back in 1994, built around limiting total fat. It meant you could have certain fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, but you had to limit saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
The classic example is KIND bars, which are mostly nuts. The FDA told them they couldn't use the word "healthy" because the nuts had too much fat. Under those same rules, plenty of sugary cereals and fat-free puddings could legally be called healthy because they were low in fat. So you have to watch for that and be aware of it. The new rule changed in December of 2024, and for compliance purposes it needs to be in place by February 2028, so we'll see how that changes things.
With the new rules, salmon, nuts, and olive oil can be considered healthy, and sugary cereals cannot. We have an example here — Honey Nut Cheerios says "as part of a heart-healthy diet." I'm not sure how that's going to be affected; it'll be interesting.
Just think about what this tells you: for 30 years, the official government definition of "healthy" said that almonds were out and sugary cereal was in. It's not a conspiracy — it's just a rule written around one nutrient instead of around the actual whole food. This is exactly the same mistake we talk about in medicine, where you take one number, make it a whole story, and get an answer that's completely backwards — similar to how the total weight on the scale doesn't always mean as much as the parts that make up that number.
Scanner Apps and Grocery Health Scores
One thing we often use is tools, because if you've looked at a label recently, you know the ingredient lists can be long. I struggled with going shopping, because reading a label while going through the supermarket can be exhausting — I'd eventually just give up, and my children hated going to the grocery store with me because it took so long. Your kids are in the cart while you wheel them past these pretty boxes of cereal that look cool from the front, but they don't show you the back.
So there are some tools. One we use quite often is an app called Yuka. You scan a label and it gives a score based on what the label says. Hy-Vee also, just starting this year, will give you a health rating for different foods if you shop online — while you're putting it in your cart, it gives you a rating.
It's important to know that tools can be great, but you still have to use additional knowledge and judgment. Yuka's scoring formula is 60% nutritional quality, 30% additives, and 10% an organic bonus. Yuka is independent and ad-free — they don't take money from food companies; they're funded by subscriptions, which is real and meaningful. But there are still things to look at, because additives weigh in there, so it's important not to always rely on it. It's genuinely good at flagging ultra-processed foods, added sugars, and sodium, so it's a good thing to use if you're in a hurry and trying to know the difference between two similar products — "What's the best yogurt brand?" And it's important to reemphasize that it's not funded by the food industry, which is a big deal.
The one thing is — and we've already talked about this — Yuka punishes fat in whole foods, just like the FDA story of making high-fat foods look bad. It has a tendency to downgrade things like full-fat dairy, cheeses, nuts, olive oil, and fatty fish, so keep that in mind. The additives it looks at are also just a count of how many additives are in a food, not the amount. When we're looking for clean, we want as few of these as possible, but it's something to be aware of.
The other thing I want to be careful about is labeling foods as "good" or "bad" — that's a slippery slope. We can slide into some disordered eating, and we don't want that. Honesty is the best policy here.
The Hy-Vee Score — A Different Animal
The second tool we wanted to talk about is the Hy-Vee score, which is a different animal but still a tool in our toolbox. It uses a food health score, and we have to remember that this tool is used and funded by the companies selling you the food. Both score on a 100-point basis, giving a rating between zero and 100.
The Hy-Vee food health score does promote healthy fats, whole grains, protein, and fiber, and it detracts for artificial colors, harmful additives, and added sugars — all good things. This means you won't have that trouble with almonds showing up as unhealthy. But once again, the company selling you the food is the one handing you the score, so we have to remember that. It's also not as transparent — with Yuka we know exactly what they're scoring on, and with the food health score we don't. That's okay; tools are great, and we just have to use them with background knowledge.
This is one of those things where a really complicated food hands you one number, and you already know exactly how that story ends, because we've watched it happen over and over. Total fat said almonds were unhealthy. A normal TSH says your thyroid is fine. A normal A1C says your metabolism is great. And we all know that isn't always the truth. Every time, the number is real, and every time, the conclusion can be wrong. So these apps are a tool — think of them like a smoke detector. It can tell you there's smoke, but you've got to be the judge. That's why we're talking about reading labels: we want to empower people to be their own judge.
Rule 1: Ingredient Order Matters
Moving to the back of the box, the ingredient list. The order of the ingredients isn't random — it's intentional. Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight, so the first ingredient is usually the biggest part of the product and does most of the work. Keep in mind that if sugar is in the top three ingredients, you're holding a dessert.
Sugar can frequently be one of the first three products, and it can be sneaky, because they may list one product with a parenthesis of all the different things in it, breaking it down so it doesn't look so bad. For instance, in Honey Nut Cheerios, whole grain oats is the first ingredient, sugar is the second, followed closely by corn starch, honey, and brown sugar. So sugar, sugar, sugar — that's why it's good and everybody likes it.
Rule 2: Sugar Wears a Lot of Coats
Sugar wears a lot of disguises. Manufacturers can split the sugar across several names so no single one appears at the top. Anything that ends in "-ose" is a sugar: sucrose, dextrose, fructose, maltose, glucose. Anything with "syrup" is a sugar: corn syrup, brown rice syrup, tapioca syrup, malt syrup. And anything called a "juice" or "concentrate" is something to watch out for.
Then there are the health-halo sugars — the ones we think are a little better: agave nectar, coconut sugar, honey, maple syrup, molasses, and date sugar. From our perspective, if you're eating clean and want to sweeten something, honey, maple syrup, or a whole date (not necessarily date sugar, but the whole product) would be better. But when you see these on an ingredient list, remember it's still sugar. And then there are the chemistry-set sugars: maltodextrin, dextrin, and barley malt — things created to produce sweetness.
Rule 3: The Length Is the Signal
The shorter the list, and the more you recognize, the better. That's very generalized, but true — if you start reading and there are all kinds of things you can barely pronounce, it's probably not something you want to take. Just put it back.
Rule 4: The Additives Are Worth Knowing
There are additives in everything, and they can be disguised in "natural flavors." These are the emulsifiers, and there's research to suggest they can affect our gut lining and microbiome, so it's worth knowing. It's not always a "definitely don't get that," but something to be aware of. Artificial dyes have gotten a lot of talk recently — some people have sensitivities — so that's another additive to watch. Partially hydrogenated oils aren't healthy either; they can raise our LDL levels. And we talked about seed oils in the Ask Us Anything segment — we'll say it again: it's not always that the seed oil is the villain; it's that seed oils are often found in ultra-processed, calorie-dense, tasty foods.
The Nutrition Panel: Two Common Tricks
You have your ingredient list, and then your nutrition panel. The first trick is servings, and how they change. A bottle of soda is two servings, not one. A bag of chips is three servings. A pint of ice cream is four servings. They can lower the number you see by reducing the serving size, so whatever amount you're going to eat, you have to multiply it if it's over the single serving size.
The second trick is the "zero grams" rounding loophole. Anything less than a gram gets rounded to zero, so it can be just under one gram and still say zero. A product can claim zero grams of trans fat while still having partially hydrogenated oil in it — and eating several servings gets you over that. I've seen sugar-free things work this way too, where they've used sugar alternatives or just not quite enough sugar to round above zero. That's where you go back to the ingredient list.
The Four Lines That Matter
Four lines really matter on your nutrition label:
- **Added sugars** — the most useful thing on the panel, because that's sugar added on top of anything naturally there. This is the one I see most: there's added sugar in pasta sauce and ketchup — a lot of things with tomatoes oddly have added sugar — and it's very difficult to find a salad dressing without sugar, because it tastes good and makes us crave it. - **Fiber** — the average person gets 10 to 15 grams a day, but we need 25 to 35 grams, because it blunts our glucose response, feeds our microbiome, keeps us satisfied, lowers LDL, and raises HDL. Our microbiome really likes fiber. - **Protein** — make sure you're getting an adequate amount. - **Sodium** — often hidden; we talked about low-sodium options. It's important for those with high blood pressure to watch.
Notice the number we're *not* talking about here: total calories. There's a place for that, but this is another case where the total number isn't as important as what makes up that total.
The 30-Second Label Rule
Let's move into what we call the 30-second label rule. Ignore the front — it's just advertisement; they've done a great job, thank you, marketers. Flip it over and look at the back. Read the first three ingredients: if there's a sweetener or refined flour, you know what you're holding — dessert — so try to put it down, unless you've got to have it. Scan the whole list for the many disguises of sugar. Check the serving size and multiply it by what you're actually going to eat, to get a real idea of what you're getting. And look at the sugar and the fiber — those two lines are really helpful. Get yourself a list of the different types of sugars you can recognize and read through it quickly: if you recognize it, put it down.
Really, what we want to point out is the same pattern we keep coming back to with patients and with you all: a number is taken out of context and treated as a whole truth. The FDA said almonds were unhealthy because of the total fat. Your phone will tell you olive oil is mediocre for the same reason. A normal TSH says your thyroid is fine; a normal A1C says your metabolism is fine. But the majority of the time, the number is real and the conclusion is wrong. So read the label — be on ingredient patrol. Know what's in your food. It's all about your health.
Wrapping Up
I hope we've given you some information to take to the store. Remember the 30-second rule, memorize a few things to look for, and understand how stuff can be hidden. It's still okay to eat almonds. One of the great tools today is online grocery shopping — you can look at those scores, take the number with a grain of salt, and drive through to pick up your groceries. Not many people can walk into any store and not get suckered into grabbing a product because "that looks good." Do you need it, or do you have to have it? There's a difference between need and want, which is why those online grocery stores are handy.
We'll see you next time. Until then, have a healthy day.