Losing weight and being on a diet means knowing exactly what you’re eating at every meal. This usually rules out going out to restaurants because it’s always a mystery how your food is being prepared and with what ingredients. Portion sizes are also a challenge as they are usually way bigger than you’re supposed to eat in one meal.
The good news is, due to the lobbying efforts of community activists, more and more states are now providing detailed nutritional information on their menus. In some cases, this is mandated by law and in others restaurants are providing the information voluntarily in an effort to give the consumers what they want.
In many restaurants it’s now becoming common to see a wealth of detailed information on menus such as calorie counts, sodium levels and amount of saturated fats. Now, along with the ingredients that went into your lasagna you can also see how much salt you’re taking in as well. You have to be a little careful though to make sure that just because it says “low fat” next to a menu item that there isn’t a high level of other undesirable ingredients such as sodium or cholesterol. Low fat is a good idea but not if it’s at the expense of other nutritional goals.
Food makers have responded to the requests for more labeling information with some creative marketing campaigns that you should watch out for. Putting “low fat” or “low sodium” on packages of food that never contained fat or sodium is somewhat misleading to people who think they’re now getting a superior product. Claims of the healthy benefits of package ingredients with only sketchy amounts of supporting evidence is also unfortunately becoming common.
The goal of all this increase in information is to make consumers more aware of what they’re eating and how healthy their food choices are. This effort seems to be succeeding, too. The Food and Drug Administration did a survey of health and diet in 2008 that seems to indicate that people are becoming much more label savvy. Over half of the people surveyed answered that they read nutritional labels in the grocery store and almost 40% of respondents claimed that they weren’t fooled by spurious claims of “low fat” or “high fiber”.
Many restaurants and grocery stores are beginning to understand that it’s good for business to recognize that people want more transparency in what goes into their food. More and more restaurants are offering gluten free and other specialty menu items to bring in those customers who, because of food allergies, had little choice in where they went out for dinner. Ultimately, this is good for the customer and good for the business as well.
Learn more about nutrition and health. Visit HealthyLiving411.com where you can find reviews and articles to choose the best diet plan for you.
