What's More Important? Nutrition Facts or Ingredients?

September 26, 2023

Depending on your nutrition goals, of course both are important, but I recommend you look at one of them first. 

When you start paying attention to food labels, your eye tends to go to certain things on the nutrition facts label, perhaps sugar or protein.  If the nutrients you care about check out ok, you might buy it.  However, I recommend you get in the habit of looking at ingredients first.

If the ingredients are mostly items you recognize, continue on to check the nutrition facts.  If both ingredients and nutrition facts check out, win-win!

While foods at the grocery store are sold with ingredients generally recognized as safe, or GRAS, it is important that your entire diet isn't made up of ultra-processed foods.  So, take a look at your shopping cart and see if you chose more ultra-processed items (like cereal, crackers and canned soup) than minimally processed items (like eggs, oats and apples).  

Learn more about label reading for your health goals.

We live in a world of convenience and sometimes to our own detriment.  We will have some more highly processed foods in our diet and that's okay.  Here's an example of a meal that's mostly minimally processed with a little highly processed food

• Quick lunch: apple, peanut butter, carrot sticks, beef jerky and a ready to drink protein shake  

Convenience foods can save time and are handy for travel, but they've become the norm and not the exception.  Work towards eating a larger portion of minimally processed foods on a daily basis.  

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