April 01st, 2015

When you are trying to build a healthier diet for yourself and your family, finding the right foods can be difficult. While shopping, you can learn some helpful details about many foods, just by their lists of ingredients and their nutrition labels. However, most of the information on these labels is only there because the food manufacturers are required to list it. Because of this, the nutrition label can be deceptive, and can lack certain information.
Many food manufacturers prefer to blur the lines between good and bad, or natural vs unnatural ingredients. This way, they can profit from the lack of knowledge that the general public has regarding the food we eat. I’ve already written about the distinct difference between beneficial natural sugars and harmful added sugar. It is very important to understand distinctions like these.
Another example is the calorie. Widely used to measure the amount of energy you get from the food that you eat, it can be an important part of keeping track of your food intake. However, a distinction must be made between nutritious calories like those from an apple, and empty calories like the ones from a doughnut. On the one hand, you have an apple which provides you with so many vitamins and nutrients, thus making the calories from it nutrient-dense and extremely beneficial. On the other hand, you have the calories from a doughnut, which are empty and void of almost all nutritional value. 
Something like a doughnut, which is high in deficient calories, forces your body to use the valuable nutrients it has on hand, in order to process these empty calories. This is how a person living in a great country like America can sadly be suffering from both malnutrition and obesity at the same time!