I’ve had two cans of soup just chilling on my window sill for the past six weeks after I went through a horrendous cycle of mono. Amid all my sleeping, sneezing and sore throats, I stopped for a quick second to read the nutrition facts. Trans Fats, low, good. Carbohydrates, high, good. Sodium, oh shit thats a ton. I took for granted my experience in a kitchen and knowing all my basic food groups and how they affect my body, but what about those people that don’t? What about the people that shovel Lucky Charms down their throat cause the box says, “High in Fiber” per a doctors request? Their lack of literacy in the sense of nutrition can be detrimental to their health, especially if they shop by taste or price rather than ingredients.
Shopping and eating well does not have to be expensive. It doesn’t take a nutritionist to shop for a healthy dinner. Educating one’s self on how to shop for healthy options takes a small amount of time and minimal knowledge of the basic food groups. If BUNNY BREAD has a large amount of added sugar, is it really worth buying it because one’s mom has been buying it for the past 20 years? Social stigmas and lack of knowledge are plaguing homes with unhealthy, processed meals even though the healthy alternative is one can over.
Yea, it’s crazy that people either don’t take the time to reading the nutrition label or that they really don’t understand how to read it in the first place.
When I was in high school, I was really into lifting weights and being healthy. I would be consuming all of these protein shacks and Gatorade recovery bars. I thought what I was eating was totally healthy, but in reality, they were just candy bars and the sugary drinks that had extra protein in it.
Now because I was much young back then, my body didn’t notice the difference due to the high metabolism but still, that was all just junk, I didn’t bother to read the nutrition label because the coaches encouraged us, athletes, to keep on consuming it after every workout.
Now I mostly cook from the rawest produce I can buy or I look very closely at what the ingredients are and how much of it is in a package or bottle.
This is an interesting observation that I never much considered. Although I really shouldn’t, I tend to turn a blind eye to those nutrition facts when I open my second bag of Hot Cheetos. The difference is that I am choosing not to utilize my nutrition-fact literacy while others simply can’t read the label. To any normal person, it looks like a bunch of nonsense and numbers. I think either the literacy of nutrition labels should be more widespread, or they should be altered to be more readable than they are now.