Toxic or Tasty? What Every Parent Needs to Know About Food Labels

Our food industry is broken. As a mother of four very busy children, a broken food industry is the last thing I need.  But alas, it's what I have to deal with. My kids' health and longevity is one of the most important gifts I can give my children. Since my kids were ages 6, 4 and 1, we have lived a dietary lifestyle that has gone against the societal norm. Why? Each of my children were battling an illness or ailment. Asthma, eczema, skin rashes, headaches, digestive problems…these things were plaguing us and our quality of life. I felt like these illnesses were just happening to us, until I turned to the World Wide Web in research. What I found fueled me to alter our lifestyles to fight these illnesses. *According to Dr. Casey Means,

• The USA has 10,000 chemicals in our food 

• Europe allows 400 chemicals

• Autoimmune Diseases are going up 13% per year

• In 1950 1% of Americans had Type 2 Diabetes, today 50% of Americans have Type 2 Diabetes of are Pre-Diabetic

There are many scary statistics about our health and food industry. It is not my intent to scare, but rather to share and motivate you. We are going to arm ourselves with knowing what is in our food and what is okay for our kids to eat.

The first thing I wish to share is how to read a nutrition label. This is not with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in mind. The food guide pyramid is beyond broken. I will share more on that later, but to bring you something tangible today, let’s jump right in. 

When reading a nutrition label with your kids' health in mind there are three aspects to pay attention to. 

1. Trans Fat

2.  Added Sugars

3. The Ingredients

Trans Fat - Trans fats should always be 0g. The Food and Drug Administration banned trans fats in 2021, however some processed foods still contain trans fats. So anything premade that comes in a box or bag may contain trans fats. Tran fats are linked to several chronic illnesses, so double check that label!

Added Sugars - this number would ideally always be 0. Unfortunately, it is very challenging to find processed foods that haven’t had some kind of sugar, or multiple sweeteners added to it. But we have to arm ourselves with the knowledge that added sugars are incredibly harmful to our children’s health and do our best to pick products with zero, zilch, nada added sugars. Added sugars come with a whole host of problems that we will share in depth with you at a later date.

Ingredients - this is a BIG one! We will spend a lot of time on this category. Here are some basic rules to get you started with reading the ingredients list and helping your children to learn to do the same. 

1. The fewer the ingredients the better 

2. Can you pronounce the ingredients? If not, you should not be buying it, and your child should definitely not be eating the food. 

3. Do you even know what the ingredient is? If you do not know what the ingredient is, do not give it to your child. 

Remember, there are 10,000 chemicals put in and on our food. These chemicals are behaving as poisons in our children's bodies. So if you can’t pronounce it or know what it is, it is likely one of those poisons. If you do not have clear nutritional goals, food labels end up being random numbers. For our children, our main focus is their health, not a diet.

Now go explore your pantry, check the labels when shopping this week and if your child can read, start teaching them to do the same. Please do not feel mom-guilt when you find some of your favorite products do not make the cut. We are all learning together. The important part is you are arming yourself and your children with the ability to read the nutrition label. It is up to us to be the change in our children's food!

*information from Dr. Casey Means can be found at https://www.caseymeans.com/learn/newsletter-25