Food Labels to Look for When Shopping in a Hurry

Eating healthy is something most of us aspire to do, but a lack of time and inability to spend hours in the supermarket reading food labels makes it impossible to know whether or not what we’re buying is actually good for us. Whether you’re attempting to shop between meetings, when you’re in a hurry or when you have two fussy kids in the cart or you’re just tired and ready to get home, reading all the food labels of every item you pick up is time-consuming and not always something you want to do. Here are three quick shortcuts to help you grab healthy items.

Check Sodium Content

Even if you don’t have a great deal of time, you can check the sodium content on the back of each box you pick up in the store. All food labels feature this information. What you should look for are servings that are more than 200 mg. If you see this number or one larger than that, put that item back and move on. It’s not good for you and therefore, it’s not worth anymore of your precious time.

Ingredient List

All food labels contain an ingredient list. The best foods are the ones that have an ingredient list you can pronounce and that you recognize. When labels are full of things you cannot pronounce, things that don’t look natural and thinks that have a lot of additives, put it back. It’s not good for you.

Sugar

One of the worst things you can do is consume a ton of sugar, but sometimes you have no idea sugar is even located in the foods you’re consuming. This means you should always take just a quick second to check out the sugar content in anything you purchase. If the food labels on anything you’re looking to purchase state that the sugar content is more than 5 to 10 grams per serving, don’t purchase this item.