Food Quality vs. Calories

Counting calories is an easy thing to do. There are a lot of apps that help you see your caloric intake and give you a baseline of how much you should be eating. Something that we were never really taught is how to read an ingredient list for any packaged foods. What to look our for? What to avoid? How to know if an ingredient list is suitable or not.

First things first, I am not saying that calories don’t matter. It’s very easy to do math and count calories, but it seems like no one really knows how to navigate through an ingredient list. A basic rule I always like to follow is to try your best and avoid foods with a very long list of ingredients. The more ingredients, the more processed it is, so it probably is not the best for your health.

Some things to think about:

• Anything less than 5 ingredients is ideal.

• If you cant pronounce a name of some ingredients its probably not the best for you.

• Look at the daily value (%DV) instead of grams. If something has more than 20%DV, it has a lot of whatever nutrient that is. If it has less than 5% DV, it doesn’t have a significant amount. For example, try to avoid products with more than 20% DV of added sugars. On the other hand, I would recommend getting a packaged food with more than 20%DV of protein.

• The ingredient that’s listed first means its the most abundant in that specific ingredient, and descends as you go down the list.

A big reason as to why food quality is more important than calories is because these calorically dense, processed foods don’t contain a lot of nutrients. Not only do they not contain nutrients but they can contain ingredients that may cause damage to your body that can deplete nutrients and cause inflammation.

When you are eating foods with more nutrients you will feel more full and satiated. You are giving your body exactly what it needs for basic functions like proper cellular function to every organ working properly. All vitamins, minerals, and nutrients play a role in the metabolic processes in your body. Being low in certain nutrients can lead to health problems. This is why almost all health problems come from what we put on our plate. Everything you see in the mirror from the way your hair is, skin, eyes, are all made up of the food you eat. Internally same thing, the way your brain functions, the way your heart beats, and everything else are all heavily determined by what you are eating. So when it comes to overall health, it is clear that choosing real, whole foods, that are nutrient dense with no list of ingredients are the way to go.

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