Dear Janet,
Great question! Most of us have good intentions. We want to eat healthy but deciphering food labels can be very confusing. Sometimes labels can even be misleading. Here are a few things to remember the next time you go grocery shopping.

Always look for how many servings are in each package. Many labels will list their product as having a large number of servings even though it is packaged in a small container. A good example would be if a small box of cookies has 3 grams of fat per serving and there are 15 servings in each box, Guess what? If you eat the whole box in one sitting you just consumed a whopping forty-five grams of fat. If that’s not misleading what is? In order to avoid falling for this marketing scam you will need to find the number of servings and multiply it by the amount of fat found in each serving. This will give you the total amount of fat in each package.

There are many ways used to describe foods these days. The most common are fat free, low fat, light or (lite) and reduced fat. The FDA has specific laws that say how much fat can be in foods that bear these names. A product that says its fat free is allowed to have .05 grams of fat per serving. Products that are labeled low fat are allowed to have 3 grams of fat or less per serving. These labels are obviously your best choices. If you’re worried about 3 grams of fat you are either a competitive body builder or you have reached the level of obsession.

Products that say light or (lite) and reduced fat are a different story. These products can still have a lot of fat. The law states that light or (lite) must have 50% less fat or 1/3 fewer calories than a comparable product. A product labeled reduced fat must have 25% less fat than a comparable product. The only problem is that food manufacturers may decide to compare their foods with ones that are very high in fat. For example if a regular carton of ice cream has 25 grams of fat per serving the reduced fat version will have 18 grams of fat per serving. That’s still a lot of fat.

Trans fats are used to add shelf life to certain products. They can be found in cookies, crackers and other snack foods. They have been proven to cause high cholesterol levels and contribute to heart disease. In other words they are not very good for you. The reason you are hearing a lot about them these days is because for the first time ever food manufacturers are required to list them on their products. This law goes into effect January 2006.So look for them. They are supposed to be listed on the nutritional fact panel under the line for saturated fat.