WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

43. Understanding Food Labels for Better Hormone and Insulin Health

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 43

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Reading food labels can be a game changer for your hormone health. Discover how understanding nutrition labels and ingredient lists can help manage conditions that stem from blood sugar disregulation. Along the way, you'll also find valuable resources and past episodes that delve deeper into hormone balance and practical tips for maintaining healthy insulin levels.

In this episode, we peel back the layers of food labels to uncover the hidden sugars in everyday items like yogurt and nut butters. Learn to decode the "included added sugars" line and recognize different sugar names that often fly under the radar. We'll also discuss the natural occurrence of sugars in foods like milk and their impact on your body's insulin response. Plus, we’ll highlight the role of sodium in your diet and its importance compared to other nutritional elements.

Monitoring your sugar intake becomes even more crucial when leading a sedentary lifestyle. We'll discuss why it's essential to read food labels for their sugar content rather than relying on daily value percentages, and how individual metabolic health and conditions like prediabetes or PCOS influence sugar needs. Discover how pairing carbohydrates with protein, fat, and fiber can better manage blood sugar levels, and why physical activity is vital for processing sugars effectively. Tune in to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls of high-sugar foods and make more informed dietary choices for a healthier you.

Sources:
The Problem With the 2,000-Calorie Diet
What is On a Food Label
Interactive Nutrition Facts Label
Unicorn Millionaire pod by Traveler Charly Money Coaching®



Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Wealthy Generation Podcast W-E-L-L-T-H-Y. Today, you're going to want to take notes, you're going to want to grab one of your favorite food products that you have somewhere in your house or in your pocket in your bag, because today's episode is going to be all about food labels. Okay, is going to be all about food labels, okay. And if you don't know if this is the first podcast episode you are hopping into, I just want to say that I am Naomi Jerez. I am a food and hormone health coach and I teach women, women of color, how to use food and lifestyle to heal their bodies and balance their hormones. So what does this all have to do with food labels? It has a lot to do with food labels, and I am going to hop into that today. Before I hop into that, though, just two announcements. Number one my entire family is home while I am recording this episode. So if you by any random chance while this is playing here, screaming, fighting, throwing, my kids have been warned that I'm recording, but sometimes they be forgetting. So if you hear something, all you need to do is like yeah, I know, I know, and we're going to keep it moving because that's what I'm going to do so. I invite you to do the same.

Speaker 1:

My second announcement is that I want to also shout out different podcasts on here that might be aligned with your holistic wellness journey, and one of those very magical podcasts belongs to Traveler Charlie. They were on my 41st episode right on here on Wealthy Generation first episode right on here on Wealthy Generation, and they are a Latinx, non-binary money coach and ex-stock broker, and one of my favorite things that I have heard them say was that they translate like the white man's business money jargon, and I thought that was genius, because one of the things that would scare me the most when it came to anything having to do with money and investing and anything having to do with that was the language, because it was difficult for me to understand. I didn't hear it when I was younger, or it was just the language, if it was used, was surrounded with a lot of fear. So I love that they really break it down. They were in it for a while and now they are teaching us how to engage with our money in a way that's not scary and safe. So I invite you to check out their podcast called Unicorn Millionaire. I am also going to leave it in the show notes so you can easily find it. And they talk about everything from HSAs to retiring early, buying homes, credit cards, like all of the things in addition to their very own personal healing journey being rooted in an actual wellness lifestyle. And if you've heard their episode 41, you're going to hear how they thought they were being healthy because they were following really trendy ways of being healthy and then they realized that, in fact, their health was suffering and they took charge. So I invite you to listen in to their Unicorn Millionaire podcast, our 41st episode together here on Wealthy Generation, and get your money on.

Speaker 1:

Okay, all right, let's hop into food labels. Let's do this, okay. So the reason why I wanted to record this episode was because anytime I post anything having to do with food labels on Instagram, I always get a lot of questions. All right, and I even did maybe I'll repeat it again a whole workshop on how to read food labels and how to make food choices from that, because they number one some people don't even know they exist Not only the food label, but the ingredient list. I'm not talking about the ingredient list today, but it is oftentimes even more important or, in combination, important from the nutrition label, where it has all like the little chart with the numbers, okay, so it is something that's really important.

Speaker 1:

One of the ways that this can help you on your hormone journey is that it really impacts the hormone. Insulin, which helps your body process, is one of the hormones that helps your body process sugar, get sugar out of your bloodstream, and it's one of the main hormone imbalances that leads to illnesses and chronic conditions like PCOS, diabetes. It affects your heart health, your blood pressure. It affects your eyes with glaucoma. It affects your teeth with cavities. It affects every single cell in your body. So we want to know how we can protect insulin, how we can give it a hand so that it is not leading to all of these diseases. And if you want to hear even more about insulin and tips on how to protect yourself from it, I also invite you to listen to episodes 31 and 32 here on Wealthy Generation Podcast, where I talk about 14 different ways of understanding your top five hormones and how to get them balanced, and one of the main ones I talk about on there is insulin.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so if you have a food label in front of you, I am also going to link in the show notes all of the resources that I'm going to be mentioning in this conversation today so that you can go ahead and see them for yourself and, as a way to cite my sources right, I'm going to put them in the show notes. So one of the most popular things that people look up in the food label is the calories. Okay, and if you haven't seen, usually at the bottom of the food label there's this little asterisk where it says the percentage daily value. Dv tells you how much a nutrition in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice. Okay, so this food label is being based off of 2,000 calories a day, assuming that you're counting your calories, assuming you are following a 2,000 calorie a day meal plan, and I don't know how many people are counting their calories. Some do, because one of the very big, big, big, like myths out here or like very misunderstood concepts, is being in a calorie deficit equals weight loss, which, yes, but there is. So it can, right, but there's so much more that goes into that. Okay, so my first question when I look at something like this is who came up and why did somebody choose that number 2000 calories per day. Now they're not taking into account if you're a child, if you're a woman, if you're a man, what your activity levels are and how much energy because calories are energy Do you need in a day to sustain your daily activity? Are you sweating, are you sedentary, are you pregnant, are you breastfeeding? As you can see, there are so many questions that determine how many actual calories, how much energy, somebody needs in a day. And then I got to searching. I was like why did they choose this? Let me do some Googling. So I found this article from the Harvard Healthcare St Vincent's Medical Center. Again, it's going to be linked in the show notes. That says the history goes like this I quote, I'm reading from the article the history goes like this In the 1990s, when the FDA was standardizing nutrition labels for US food, they wanted to include a benchmark number for daily calories.

Speaker 1:

Unfortunately, no such number existed, so they turned to data from public surveys in which people had self-reported how many calories they ate per day. Were these accurate reports? Fingers crossed. They got a wide range of answers from 1,600 to 3,000 calories, but nutrition labels can only fit so much information. Ultimately, the committee decided to keep it simple, if not exactly accurate. They wanted just one number. Technically, the survey averaged was about 2,400 daily calories, but 2,000 won too much. It was essentially a compromised number. That is nice and rounded, said Dr St Pierre, which puts into perspective how badly we have managed calories and serving sizes as a society. Okay, end quote. Okay, do you start to see the problem here with parts of the information in a food label?

Speaker 1:

I love food labels and I look for very specific information on there, but calorie counting for me is just not one of them. I practically never look at the calories right, I do count other numbers from the food labels, but calories is not one of them. Now, don't get me wrong. Some people do need to count their calories and I find that it's in very specific situations. Usually the people who are counting calories are athletes, because if they are not eating enough energy, enough calories, they can go especially women into something called low energy availability. That can be, dare I say, almost fatal, because you are exerting so much more than you are giving your body and you really need to give your body what it needs to function at optimal levels. So there are reasons as to why you might want to count calories, might want to count calories, but rarely do. I find that it's super effective for weight loss or for just running your day-to-day. I find that other strategies, such as knowing what you're putting on the plate, the quality of your food, how you feel in your body, is just a lot more effective for the average individual.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I'm not talking about you out here in the Olympics, I'm recording this in. The Olympics are happening in Paris right now. Um, or like it's just for every individual. Just please, if you take anything from this, just know that like the situations can be so insanely different, okay, but in general, the average human, it like the calories are kind of like, okay, like it's okay, like, especially from a food label where it's being counted on 2000 calories, anyway. So let's keep moving. This is the history of that.

Speaker 1:

So when someone asks me, let's say, about the daily value, percentage, the percentages all the way to the right of a food label, I never, ever, ever look at that. It does not matter. The food label does not add up to 100%, because they're just giving you how much that is for the day for that specific line item. For example, the food label I'm looking at right now from the interactive nutritional facts label from the FDA that I'm going to put in the show notes, says that sodium is 19% of your daily value. So you would need to calculate the percentage of the daily value of every single thing you of sodium, of every single thing you eat throughout the day, and see if that individually adds up to 100. And you would have to do the same for each and every line item, like total fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, fiber. All of this right, you would need to do the percentage of the daily value. So that, to me, is just so ineffective.

Speaker 1:

I don't necessarily follow. I don't even know generally how much calories I'm eating in a day. There are ways to know if you might be eating less or more, depending on the density of the food. For example, nut butters are much more caloric, dense than spinach, right, so you might need a lot less peanut butter or nut butter to fulfill, let's say, 100 calories is always like a popular one than you would spinach. The volume is a lot more right. So that's how the calories come into this. But the daily value is just I don't. It just makes me exhausted just thinking about it, so I just never look at that. Ok. So other things.

Speaker 1:

On the food label is the serving size, because and that's all the way at the top, usually right under the section that says nutritional facts. So the serving size is how many servings are in the container, the bag, whatever it is that you have in your hand, right? If it's a single serve, like, let's say, a yogurt cup, it might say one serving. The whole container is one serving. Sometimes for drinks this can get really tricky, like something like a bottle of kombucha, for example. You drink the whole 16 ounces, but on the label it says that there are two serving size in there. So now, all of a sudden, everything that is on the label is based on the serving size. So you will have to multiply everything by two.

Speaker 1:

And this is where it gets tricky, with things like sugar, for example, because sometimes it might say, oh, the sugar amount in a kombucha is nine grams, but you fail to see that the serving size there's two serving sizes in that one bottle and then you drink the whole bottle at once. So you actually had a total of 18 grams of sugar and not nine, because nine grams was for just one serving size and there were two in that bottle. I hope this math is mathing for you, okay. So when you're having something, you generally want to look at what the label was, what serving size the label was calculated from, especially for something like sugar, protein fiber. Those are the things that I usually focus on on the label, but I just wanted to point that out and then it'll tell you what the measurement of the serving size is. So they'll say, let's keep on with the kombucha bottle. There's two servings in here. And you're like, okay, well, what are the two servings? And the bottle is probably 16 ounces. And then they'll tell you eight ounces is one serving, okay.

Speaker 1:

For other things it might be like one cup of rice, let's say, equals one serving. That's actually probably not true For carbohydrates. The serving size is usually like half a cup. That's on the labels, so you can calculate it. Okay, how much is half a cup? Half a cup is about four ounces, um, something like that, right? So you want to pay attention to the serving size. You want to pay attention to what amount equals that one serving size? So those are things that you want to pay attention in the food label. And then this is important because, specifically, sugar, which is tied to insulin, right?

Speaker 1:

So usually, depending on the food, I focus on different things on the food label. For example, if I'm looking at a carbohydrate food, then I know that hopefully, if it's a whole grain or a complex carb, something like that, it's probably gonna have dietary fiber in it, right, it should hopefully. So let's say, I'm buying bread and I'm comparing the two labels and I'm looking for a whole grain bread, and something that's really important to me is fiber, one of the key star attributes of carbohydrates and that's something that looks like oatmeal, pasta, rice bread, sweet potatoes, yuca, platanos, like starchy vegetables, right, potatoes, corn, all of those. So tortillas like empanadas if they're made out of corn. All that those are carbohydrates and I want to make sure that they have some fiber inside. So usually when I'm looking at a carbohydrate, the first thing I look at on the food label is the dietary fiber. Then I want to see if it has any added sugar. But that some sort of meat like meat patties, what else? Tuna, shrimp, any sort of seafood. I want to.

Speaker 1:

The first place I look at the food label is protein. There's a protein. So I want to make sure. I want to see how much protein is included in this particular package and if it's a fat, usually it's mostly fat, but it'll have sprinkles of other things A good example, such as protein. A good example is peanut butter or almond butter, where, of course, the saturated fat or the total fat is going to be high, but it will have amounts of protein. Usually is eight grams for two tablespoons of nut butter. More or less has eight grams of protein, but the saturated fat is really high. And again is another calorie dense food. Now, across all three macros. Right, the macros are the carbohydrates, the protein and the fat.

Speaker 1:

What I also want to look at is, aside from fiber and the protein, is the total sugars, not only the total sugars, but there is a second line item under total sugars that says included added sugars. Now, this line item here is key. It is key because there are so many, so much hidden sugars in our food that is wild. They sprinkle it everywhere. They sprinkle it in your yogurt, which is under protein. They sprinkle it in your bread slices, which is under carbohydrates. They sprinkle it in your nut butters, which is under fats, carbohydrates. They sprinkle it in your nut butters, which is under fats. So, universally speaking, I don't care what food label you're looking at. The sugar is the main one that you want to pay attention to, aside from protein and fiber and the fat.

Speaker 1:

Right, a lot of people get hung up on the sodium. Yes, that's important, but to me is not as important as the other ones, and usually sodium is a mineral that's very important for hydration, especially if you are a person who sweats, moves around, exercises is one of the ways that your body absorbs water. Right, but not everybody's like that. And, of course, if you have hypertension, high blood pressure, things like that, you want to be mindful of that. So it's not that it's not important. But if you don't have any health concerns that is related to too much salt or something like that, then I just feel like it's a little lower. And people who are like, oh, I bloat or I swell when I have a lot of salt or something like that, I would also invite you to see what else you're eating. And it's probably inflammation and there's other stuff going on, that's not just the fact that you're having a lot of salt. So I invite you to go have conversations like that.

Speaker 1:

So this total sugar line and included sugar line this included sugars or added sugar line is fairly new. It's less than 10 years old, where it's this added sugar line, and that's really important because this added sugar line mean that they took whoever the person created this food product was. They took spoons full of sugar or anything else. Y'all. The list for sugar is so long.

Speaker 1:

There are many different kinds of varieties of sugar. It just does not say sugar on labels. There are many other ways to add sugar to something where it doesn't just say like natural cane sugar. So that means they took some sort of sweetener and added it to whatever product you have and added it to whatever product you have. So let's say it's a strawberry flavored yogurt and it's under included or added sugars, it says eight grams. That means they took eight grams of sugar, whatever one they chose, and poured it into your yogurt cup. That's what it means.

Speaker 1:

Now, sugar on the ingredient label, which we're not getting that much into, can say something like cane sugar, high fructose, corn syrup, date syrup, agave, honey, maple syrup. The list goes on, and on, and on and on. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but corn syrup, solids, rice syrup, if you see syrup, if you see keen sugar, if you see agave, honey, maple, those are all different kinds of sugars. Then you see the total sugar line. This one again, is really popular. I'm going to keep on with the yogurt example, where it might say total sugars 18 grams. Then under added sugars it might say added sugars eight grams. So you're like, okay, well, where does the 10 grams in this total come from if added sugar is just eight? So the 10 grams is naturally occurring sugar in the milk.

Speaker 1:

I am sure you might've heard of good old lactose being lactose intolerant. Lactose is a sugar. Anything usually that ends in O-S-E is a sugar. Sucralose, lactose, glucose, fructose those are different kinds of sugars. They all end in O. So that's like a little tip to go by when you're looking at your food labels.

Speaker 1:

So the lactose is the naturally occurring and if you're lactose intolerant, by the way, it's like you're missing that enzyme to digest that sugar and it makes it difficult for your digestive system, right, so it's just naturally occurring. So usually what happens is that it's not a huge deal when it's these naturally occurring sugars that's in the product and if it's with yogurt, it has other things in there, like protein and fat. And when you're having naturally occurring sugars that are naturally paired with other macros like protein and fat, when your body digests it, when it's going through the digestive system, it generally does not cause as big of a sugar spike as if it was sugar alone going through your system. So let's say that it didn't have any protein, it didn't have any fats, whatever you were going to eat, but it had a lot of sugar. Whatever you were going to eat, but it had a lot of sugar. And then that becomes like red flag for the body, insane amount of insulin coming out depending. Right, this is all generally speaking and it causes a red alert in the body. It has to deal with it in general. It causes a red alert in the body. It has to deal with it in general.

Speaker 1:

Okay, now you might be asking yourself like well, how much sugar should I be having? What's a good amount of sugar to have? So again, generally speaking, from the research, the body can only handle an upper limit of 10 grams of sugar at once. Now, this is why I love looking at the grams on a food label and totally ignoring the daily value. It doesn't tell me anything, okay, but the grams do.

Speaker 1:

The grams tell me a lot, because if I see a food product and it has 18 grams of sugar in there and all I'm going to do the whole day is sit and work. I know that's a lot for my body at once. Right, it's just at the upper limit. It's 10 grams and that is a lot for our bodies to handle. Grams and that is a lot for our bodies to handle, especially if we're just going to be sedentary and just sitting, all right. So grams tell me tangible, understandable information of how hard my body is going to have to work. How hard is insulin going to have to work if I have 18 grams of sugar, especially on its own, not paired with any fat or protein, and all I'm going to do is sit down for two hours and answer emails and coach, right, it's a big deal.

Speaker 1:

So for me generally, if I'm going to be pretty sedentary, I like to keep it under five grams. I like to keep it under five grams per serving size, okay. And then, if I'm having two servings, I double it. If I'm having three servings, I triple it. And I know that if I'm having three servings, I need to factor in 15 grams of sugar for that product. All right, I hope you're still with me. If this is super confusing, send me a text or a DM or an email and reach out, okay.

Speaker 1:

So also, to answer the question of how much sugar you need or something like that is very individual, right, it's very individual in the sense that it depends on your metabolic health. It depends on how much, how insulin sensitive you are or insulin resistant you are. My body tends to run a little bit more insulin resistant. So I do like to be mindful of my sugar intake, not only that, my carbohydrate intake, because carbohydrates get turned into sugar in the body and that's how it's processed and digested. Now, that's not to scare you, that's not to scare me, it's just little, just like information to have, and I know that a big way to help insulin and to help curb the blood sugar, for insulin not to work so hard, is the engagement of muscle. Okay. So this is why, if you weren't an athlete and you're going to go run a marathon, it's really important to have sugar and to have carbs.

Speaker 1:

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of marathoners and carb loading the day before or carb cycling, right, like giving your body more of the sugar and the carbohydrates when you know your body is going to need that amount of energy because you are going to go do some sort of physical activity. You're going to go bike for a lot of miles. You're going to go marathon running, you're going to go lift heavy, something like that. So your body requires more energy. Now, if you're a little bit more insulin resistant, you're already showing signs that your body is struggling a little bit. Maybe you have hyperpig or around your fingers, or you have PCOS or you, let's say, have acne. Sometimes it's due to high insulin, right. Then you want to be a little bit more careful with that. Then you want to be a little bit more careful with that, especially if you're not going to go move right, especially if you're not moving. So you just want to have a good temperature on where you are in your physical health, where you are in your movement.

Speaker 1:

Are you pre-diabetic? Are you not? Where is your metabolic health, which then can help you understand how much sugar you're needing or not? And there are signs, more signs, that your body gives you as to how insulin resistant you are. For example, when I was pre-diabetic you are. For example, when I was pre-diabetic, I would get migraines if I didn't eat after two or three hours I would get hangry and have really bad attitude. I would always have to have a granola in my bag. I would panic when I didn't know where my next meal was going to come from, next meal was going to come from and I did not know that all those were signs of insulin resistant. And then I was able to reverse my prediabetes when first of all, I didn't even know I was prediabetic. I found out years later when I was looking through some of my medical lab work. But the thing is that learning about food, learning about reading the food labels, learning how to find hidden sugar in the food labels, learning how to balance my meals, for example, I mentioned a lot when sugar or when carbohydrates are paired with protein and fat and fiber, like vegetables, then it can really help manage sugar.

Speaker 1:

The way you are eating your food, the order in which you're eating your food a lot of it comes into play to help insulin and to understand how much you're having at once. And not only that building your entire meal. And not only that. Building your entire meal can also I know some people like things that can be a sugar bomb that you can find out by looking at the food label and adding each individual. One up is smoothies. Oh my gosh, people can have so much sugar in a smoothie and it's like, oh, it's so healthy. I'm having a smoothie and I'm putting protein powder and these fruits and this powder and this let's say, peanut butter and all that and before you know it, you're having almost 30 grams of sugar in one smoothie. Can you even imagine? That's a lot because, again, generally speaking, we spoke about the upper limit that your body is able to process at once 10 grams and now we're talking about 30 grams at once, right. Grams at once, right, it's just a lot. So you want to add things up.

Speaker 1:

Another one that is super sneaky sometimes is bread and you're trying to make a sandwich the Dave's Killer bread. I love that brand. They're generally clean. For sliced bread, however, the one I buy at home is the power seed one, the red one, because the good seed, I believe. That's the yellow label and the green label, which I forgot the name of, that one. Each slice, each slice of bread has about four to five grams of sugar inside.

Speaker 1:

Now you imagine, if you make a sandwich, you're already starting off off the bat with 10 grams of added sugar, plus the wheat, carbs from the actual bread, the flour and all that. So if you're like, oh, I'm just eating better, I'm making these changes, I'm buying these brands and you're still not familiar how to read a food label and how the serving sizes work and how much it is per container and how much it is, then it can really mess with the goals that you have, and it can really not only of weight loss. I don't want you to think that. I want you to think of how hard your body has to work to digest this.

Speaker 1:

And if you're not moving, if you're sitting all day at work and you're barely exercising, you're pretty sedentary or you're doing leisurely exercises where you're not really engaging your muscles, then your body does not have a lot of help. This is why is also part of the recommendations to go out for a walk after we eat, to do some sort of movement, because then you're moving your body, you're engaging your muscles and your muscles kind of wake up and they start assisting insulin and removing the excess sugar from your bloodstream. Okay, so usually if I have heavy meals, if I need to move around, if I just want to engage, and I don't have the opportunity to go on a walk, I understand that takes time and we might have things to do, then I engage in other ways. I either do squats with calf raises, I sweep up my house, I wash the dishes, we fold clothes, we have a dance party. There are other ways to engage your muscles. After you eat, instead of just eating and staying on the couch, eating and staying in your chair, at least like, walk around the office, step outside, do something to engage your muscles, right. So, so, so important.

Speaker 1:

Now, what happens if your muscles are tapped out? Because, also, you need to make sure that you are eliminating or using up the energy that your muscles are storing, so they don't have unlimited capacity, and they're like okay, we shut down, that's it, no more. And then insulin is like well, I need to find something to do with this sugar. We cannot leave it in the bloodstream. It's converted into fat and then stored as visceral fat, especially around your organs, which can become super dangerous as well. It really does. And then what happens? We're not moving enough to use up the stored up energy and we just keep piling on and piling on. You know like when you see people having an argument and people are just like piling on, piling on, and you understand it's going to end up in a train wreck. That's sometimes what happens to our body. That's like a drastic and terrible example, but it really is Like. This is why we end up in the hospital. This is why we end up with chronic disease. This is why we end up with non-alcoholic fatty liver. This is why we end up with pancreatitis.

Speaker 1:

Your pancreas is tapped out from making insulin. It just puts so much stress on the body. And then we wonder why we're not getting results and why things are not working for us. And it's like, if your body is always consistently under panic mode, trying to clean up after everything that you're eating, how in the world is your body going to have the space and the time to actually do what you're asking it or would like for it to do? When you ask your body to do something is when you are treating it and giving it what it actually needs. When you wish your body would do something and it's not doing it and here you are getting frustrated is when you are not giving it what it needs and expecting a different result. We need to own up to what we're doing and the results we're getting, unless there are things where we need a little bit more of an intense intervention of some way where our body has become so insulin resistant that it just needs for it to kind of be reset a little bit like, give it a little bit of a stronger stimulus for change, which I'm not also going to get into in this episode.

Speaker 1:

So, bringing it back to the food labels when we're looking at the calories, when we're looking at the daily value, we have to keep in mind that we don't even know if the 2000 calories a day is what we need. You also don't want to be under eating, because this is probably a lot of the reasons of why you might feel exhausted, why you might feel like you need extra coffee, why you might feel like you don't have any brain capacity. You're probably not even eating enough for what you're doing. Right, and this is why I love to focus on grams. I want to see high fiber, if that's what I'm going for at the moment. I want to see low sugar. I want to see zero added sugar. I want to see higher protein, right, see zero added sugar. I want to see higher protein, right, and protein is another thing that's super important for satiety, for muscle growth, for cell regeneration, right, and especially as we, as women, go into perimenopause and we start losing lean muscle mass, naturally, and we feel like we are always snacky and hungry by the way, I have an episode on snacking. It's because we probably also are not eating enough protein.

Speaker 1:

So if you start to see and pay attention to your food labels, you might not even realize exactly how much sugar you're having in a day. And I am talking about everything. I'm talking about what you're drinking. I'm talking about those little chocolates you're having throughout the day. I'm talking about all the toppings that you're putting on your salad, especially salad dressing. Usually salad dressings taste amazing because they do contain a lot of added sugars. It can contain so much more than a candy bar like a ridiculous amount. The yogurts you're having, the nut butters you're having everything in the US usually is laced with added sugars. And yes, I say laced, it's a strong word and it's because sugar creates addiction. Right?

Speaker 1:

Sugar really does change if not used appropriately, if not respected, if not knowing what's happening. You don't even know, you're not even choosing to have it and it's just in foods that you're eating and you don't know about a food label, so you're just having it. Then it just trains your body to respond in that way and to want it and to crave it and to ask you for it. It affects your brain, it affects your gut. It starts to have an effect on your microbiome, on your gut bacterias, and something that your bad gut bacterias love is a good amount of sugar, and if we're just feeding into them, a lot of people tell me, like a lot of my clients, when they come to me, they're like Naomi, but I don't even eat candy, I don't even eat cake and cookies, the obvious sugar sources. But guess what, in the less obvious sugar sources, probably in the savory foods that you're eating, you're not even realizing how much added sugars and what kind of sugar bombs we're creating, just because we don't know that.

Speaker 1:

That is something to look out for. We don't have any benchmarks to go by and I hope that this episode really, really, really gives you some sort of benchmarks to look at. So just to recap, real, real fast. So just to recap real, real fast when you're looking at a food label, you want to see how many servings it has per the container, the bag, the cup, whatever it is that you're having. You want to see how much the serving size is the measurement, whether it's one slice of bread, two slices of bread, whether it's half a cup, eight ounces you want to make sure that you know. Then, other things you want to focus on is the fiber, especially if it's a carb source. The protein, especially if it's a protein source. You want to know what that is.

Speaker 1:

And the most important one that you want to look at across the board, in every single thing that you might be having whether literally as like potato chips or something like that is the total sugar and added sugar content. And can you find something or another product that has less or at least zero added sugars? Something that also has a lot of added sugars is pasta sauce that you use to make pasta. And here you are thinking you're having a nice dinner and you're not even realizing how much sugar you're having because of your pasta sauce, right, and that adds up throughout the day. Okay, so that is the main thing to look for when you're buying products, and I hope that this serves you when you're reading the numbers on the food label. I would invite you to do that and go through your pantry, go through your fridge, just practice. And if you have questions, feel free to email me, DM me, send me a text message, okay, in the show notes as well and let me know. And we can keep building wealthy generations together, because this is also something that you can teach your children. You can teach your children, you can teach your parents, your grandparents, your tia, your tia, your uncle, your cousins, and it's something that's going to serve multi-generations and impact multi-generations of health. Let's build wealthy generations together.

Speaker 1:

All right, my friend, and as always, if you need support with your health and wellness, if you need support with balancing your hormones and healing your body, you have tried everything under the sun. Nothing has quite worked. You are lost, you're looking for direction and you know that your food and your lifestyle can use some tweaking. I invite you to book a consultation, again with the link in my show notes, and we can get the party started. I would love love to coach you in turning your health around. All right, my friend, I will see you next week. Bye-bye.