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How to Read Nutrition Labels On Your Fitness Food Meals
How to Understand Fitness Food Nutrition Labels Properly
Most people look at a nutrition label and are confused. Whether it's fitness food meals or anything off the supermarket shelf, there are a whole heap of numbers, percentages, and grams and not a lot of clarity. So, this article will detail how to read them quickly and properly, so you can smash your health and fitness goals. Let's go.
Whether it's one of our delicious fitness food meals or a food product you buy elsewhere -- turn it around, and you get something like this:
As you can see, there are four parts to a nutrition label. Let's start at the beginning:
1. Understanding Serving Information on a Nutrition Label
Here's a closer look:
As we can see with this example food product, there are FOUR servings per container. And the serving size is one cup.
A little trick the food industry does to make it seem as if you're consuming fewer calories: they have the product as anywhere from two to ten servings, but have one serving size as a small portion of the product.
For example, one chocolate bar could be listed as TWO servings, but let's be honest: who is consuming half one day and half the next? So when you look at it you might say: "Oh, it's only 250 calories!?" But you're failing to recognise that is for just ONE serving, and that you'll actually consume 500 calories because there are TWO servings.
And in the product above as you can see -- eat the whole thing, and you better remember you're getting four times the amount of calories written on it.
So in this section, you'll get the serving sizes mostly in grams of cups as you can see.
Alright, let's move on to calories.
2. Understanding calories on a serving label
This part is self-explanatory -- per serve you get 280 calories. And with four servings (if you ate the whole pack) you'd get 1,120 calories.
Now depending on your goals, this is important information. You know you need to be in a deficit to lose weight, and a surplus to grow muscle.
So, if you had to eat 2,200 calories to LOSE weight, then eating this whole food product would give you half of your daily intake.
But this is why people prioritise fitness food meals like ours, as they tend to have lower calories with more protein, which brings us to our next point.
3. Understanding Nutrients on a Serving Label
Alright, you can't go a day without your goodies. I'm of course talking about your nutrients -- your macro and micronutrients.
Macronutrients are the fancy term for your protein, fat, and carbohydrates. You have your unique amount of macronutrients for fat loss or muscle growth (more for muscle growth) which all tend to prioritise enough dietary protein.
We want around 1.5 grams at least of our body weight in kilograms of protein per day and should aim for around 25-40 grams of protein per meal (roughly). This is where you'll see how much protein is in your meal. And this explains why our fitness food meals fly off the shelf everywhere -- we know how important this is for you!
You'll also see the macronutrient subtypes: saturated fat (as seen below) is a subtype of fat. Fiber and sugars are a subtype of carbohydrates.
This includes the type of fat (monounsaturated for example, or saturated as seen in our example below).
We can also learn about the vitamins here, too. These are our micronutrients.
We can see vitamin D is listed, and so are calcium, iron, and potassium. And these all represent a percentage of our recommended daily values, which brings us to the fourth and final category on a nutrition label.
4. Understanding Daily Value Percentages on a Serving Label
Take a look at this:
The percentage of Daily Value (%DV) is the percentage of the Daily Value for each nutrient in a serving of the food.
So in our example above, you can see for calcium, for example, this food product has 25% of the daily recommendation -- expressed in grams, milligrams or micrograms (depending on which one it is). We do not want to eat more than the daily recommended percentage each day.
This also allows us to see how much of a specific macronutrient or micronutrient is present. In our example above, we can see there's zero per cent vitamin D. However, there's 37% of our recommended daily sodium intake, so that's something to keep in mind.
Generally speaking, 5% daily value or less is considered low, whilst 20% or above is considered high.
And chances are you're reading this on our website because you're interested in obtaining the best physique possible. So you want to be choosing foods with a higher daily percentage of protein. so, if you haven't tried our fitness food meals already, now is the time.
Using an App to Track Your Calories
Your other option is using a macro tracker like My Fitness Pal.
You simply scan the barcodes on our meals or scan the barcode on any other food product, and it'll tell you the macronutrient contents. You can also simply type in the foods you've consumed and it will add it to your daily total. This makes tracking your food intake and thus losing weight much easier.
So, these are the four things we should be thinking about when reading a nutrition label: the serving information, calories information, nutrient information, and the percentage of the daily value present. Nutrition labels can seem confusing, but with practice, these four parts will become second nature.
Don't forget: Our world-class Workout Meals 360 coaching program can provide you with a nutritionist to teach you more about the above, too. Let's face it: it can be daunting trying to achieve substantial fat loss without the right support. With no one encouraging you, holding you accountable, and seeing where improvements are made, this is where too many dieters fail.
So with Workout Meals 360, we do all this complicated work for you, gifting you with a personal nutritionist, personal trainer, and even a dedicated chef who cooks and delivers fresh and tasty fitness food meals to your door.
You can’t fail because we won’t.
We dream of a world where you never have to think about how to eat or exercise -- just enjoy consistent fat loss results weekly. And now we’ve created it.
References
Hydes T, Alam U, Cuthbertson DJ. The Impact of Macronutrient Intake on Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD): Too Much Fat, Too Much Carbohydrate, or Just Too Many Calories? Front Nutr. 2021 Feb 16;8:640557. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2021.640557. PMID: 33665203; PMCID: PMC7921724.
