More on Food Labels

I wrote a post about how to read food labels a few months ago (read it here). I read an article the other day stating that the there were going to be some changes made to the label design.

Among the suggested changes to the food label:

1. Put calorie and serving size information in larger type at the top of the label so it’s immediately clear how much you are eating.

2. Make the ingredient list easier to read by printing it in regular type instead of all capital letters. Use bullets to separate ingredients rather than allowing them to all run together. - I really like this one!

3. List minor ingredients and allergens separately from the main ingredient list. Highlight allergy information in red.

4. List similar ingredients together and show the percentage by weight. For instance, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and grape juice concentrate are all forms of sugar and should be listed in parenthesis under the catchall heading “sugars.”

5. Use red labeling and the word “high” when a product has more than 20 percent of the daily recommendation for fats, sugars, sodium or cholesterol.

6. Make it clear which sugars are added to the product versus those that occur naturally.

7. Display prominently the percentage of whole grains contained in a product.

8. List caffeine content.

Check out a comparison of old vs. new here.

Of course, none of this matters if people don't actually read the labels and make choices of what to eat based on the data. I still think that this country is going in the wrong direction as far as eating habits, but changes like this make it easier on people that do actually care about what they eat.

TODAY'S WORKOUT:
1:15 on the bike (45 of which was spin class). Riding in HR zone 2 as much as possible. Jumped into zone 3 a few times on some larger hills. Class was completely full this morning...why does cold weather make more people get up and come to the gym at 5:30am? Doesn't make any sense to me.
Went straight from the bike to the pool for a 1 mile swim. Hit my watch at the half-mile mark. First half mile was done in 16:45, second half mile was done in 15:53, for a total mile time of 32:38.
It gets kind of hard to keep track of what lap you are on for 32 minutes, but I'm pretty sure I was close to the 74 lengths required for a mile. I may have been a few off...I kind of zone out sometimes in the pool. Either way, it was good to get a mile in again and my time was very fast for me.