frequently hear from customers, especially those that have nutrition-related health conditions such as diabetes or high cholesterol, that they don’t know what to look for on food labels. Choosing the healthiest foods can be confusing, especially if you are unclear about what to focus on. There are so many choices available to us that selecting a product can be overwhelming and time-consuming, but with the right nutritional knowledge, a shopping trip to Gelson’s can be a breeze. Use my tips to help make yourself over into a Super Shopper.

Tip #1 Buy ingredients, not food

Most of the items you buy should not come in packages; they should be minimally-processed foods that you combine and/or cook with other foods to create meals. That means that a frozen entrée meal is the polar opposite of what you want in your shopping cart. Fruits and vegetables should fill up at least half of the space in your shopping cart. Remember that you need to eat a rainbow of plant foods every day, so make sure you have a wide variety of colors in your basket. Seafood, poultry, lean meats and eggs can also have a place since they are excellent sources of minimally processed lean protein. When you do buy packaged food, look for the ones that are single ingredients such as “brown rice,” “oats” and “kidney beans.” This single ingredient rule might not be realistic for some items, so you can set a limit on the number of ingredients listed. Three to five is a good limit, with a few exceptions (some multi-grain breads and cereals list several different whole grains and nuts or seeds plus a few other ingredients like oil, water, honey and salt). If you want to buy tortilla chips, for example, go for the ones that list four ingredients instead of 12. Ingredients are listed according to weight, so the ingredients that contribute the most weight to the food are listed first and the ingredients that contribute the least weight are listed last. The first three ingredients should be the most nutritious. I don’t mind you having some added sugar in your food, but if sugar is in the first three ingredients, then the food probably contains too much added sugar.

Tip #2 Ingredients are your guide

The names of products can be very seductive and misleading. Most foods want to sound like they promote health, so words like smart, nutri-, healthy and light are used in the names. Super Shoppers ignore everything on the front of packages and go straight to the back to do their detective work. When I pick up a packaged food, the first thing I look at is the ingredient list, not the Nutrition Facts panel. The ingredients really tell you more about the food than the numerical breakdowns do. They indicate the quality of the product and the degree to which it is processed. Since you are looking for high-quality, minimally processed foods, this is the area you need to focus on. Never buy a food that lists the words “partially hydrogenated,” “high fructose” or “corn syrup” in the ingredients. Also avoid foods made with artificial colors and caramel colors, preservatives (examples include BHT, TBHQ), wheat flour or enriched wheat flour, artificial sweeteners (aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, sorbitol, maltitol, etc.) or additives such as carrageenan. Most of these additives, preservatives and sweeteners are added to highly processed foods with long ingredient lists, so if your stick with the short ingredient list guideline, then you may never have to see these unhealthful ingredients again anyway.

Tip #3 Let serving size determine your portion

Perhaps the most useful piece of information on the Nutrition Facts panel is the serving size information. I always look at what constitutes a serving and how many servings are in a package to help determine how much I need. Most packages are not single serving packages, so if you plan to eat the whole package (and I hope you don’t) then you will need to multiply all of the nutrition information by the number of servings in the package to get a more accurate idea of how many calories, grams of fat and milligrams of sodium you are eating.

Tip #4 Sodium still counts

Very few people pay attention to how much sodium is in their food these days. If you are buying a processed food, then sodium is always an issue. A high sodium intake is not only a concern for people with high blood pressure – it affects everyone’s health. Sodium intake is known to raise blood pressure, but most people don’t know that eating a lot of salt is directly related to cardiovascular disease, even in healthy, nonhypertensive people. By cutting down on salt, you can also cut down on your risk for heart attack and stroke. Most of the salt in our diets come from processed foods, so by following my guidelines to purchase mostly minimally-processed foods, you will also be able to cut down on the amount of sodium in your diet. When reading a food’s sodium content, first look at the serving size and determine if you will actually eat that amount. Then consider if you will eat the food as part of a meal or a snack. The upper limit for sodium for the day should be 2,300 milligrams for healthy people, but under 2,000 is better. If you are aiming for an upper limit of 2,300 milligrams, then allow yourself up to 700 milligrams per meal and 100 milligrams for each of two snacks. When you know what your limits are for meals, then you can easily rule out a food that comes in above your limit. Don’t forget to think about the sodium content of other ingredients in your meal. For instance, if you’re planning to eat a turkey sandwich, then don’t just look at the sodium in the turkey; there is also sodium in bread and cheese.

Tip #5 Tie breakers

Using the above strategies, you should be able to narrow a category down to two or three products. The thing to do next is compare the ingredients and labels side by side. If the ingredients are all similar and acceptable, use fiber, calories, or saturated fat as your guide (be sure you are comparing similar serving sizes). If both foods look good, then buy them both and see which one tastes better. After all, taste still counts.

A word about cholesterol and sugar: if you have high cholesterol, then you need to be paying particular attention to the words “partially hydrogenated” in the ingredient list and looking at the amount of saturated fat on the nutrition facts panel; the amount of cholesterol in a food is not relevant to your condition. If you have diabetes or high blood sugar, you should not focus on the amount of sugar in a food – the grams of sugar on the Nutrition Facts panel include the naturally occurring sugars as well as the added sugars, and there is a big difference between the two. The key is following the guidelines set forth above to make sure that you eat high-quality, minimally processed foods that are low in sodium, saturated fat and free of trans fat. The less processed the foods you eat, the more work your body has to do to break them down into sugar, which is an important element in blood-sugar control.

Are you feeling like a Super Shopper yet? If not, I know you can become one because now you have the knowledge to help you use your shopping skills for good instead of evil. Once you make the initial time investment of choosing foods according these guidelines, shopping should never be confusing again. If you ever need my help, use my Master Shopping list as a guide or call me at 1-800-GELSONS.