By Lorri Fishman, MS, RDN

By and large, students new to culinary arts are not experienced at reading food labels. Yet a food label contains information vital to evaluating the nutritional content of the vast majority of food products from the simplest to processed foods. Culinary students need to understand the food label and the ingredients in packaged foods.

Indeed, food labels provide:

• Nutrition information about almost every packaged or processed food.
• A distinctive, easy-to-read Nutrition Facts panel that enables quickly finding the information needed to make healthful food choices.
• Information on the amount per serving of saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium and other nutrients of major health concern.
• Nutrient-reference values, expressed as % Daily Values, which helps determine how a specific food fits into an overall daily diet.
• Uniform definitions of terms that describe a food’s nutrient content—such as “light,” “low-fat” and “high fiber”—to ensure that such terms mean the same for any product on which they appear.
• Standardized serving sizes that make nutritional comparisons of similar products easier.

Because March is National Nutrition Month®, an annual nutrition-education and information campaign created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), the topic of teaching students how to read food labels is particularly timely.

Additionally, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans for 2015-2020 were released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in January 2016. The newly released 8th edition of the Dietary Guidelines reflects advancements in scientific understanding about healthy eating choices and health outcomes over a lifetime. This edition recognizes the importance of focusing not on individual nutrients or foods in isolation, but on the variety of what people eat and drink—healthy eating patterns as a whole—to bring about lasting improvements in individual and population health.

How, when, why and where we eat are just as important as what we eat. Your students should, therefore, be taught to develop a mindful eating pattern that includes nutritious and flavorful foods. In light of the new Dietary Guidelines, understanding food labels is more important than ever because that knowledge helps culinary-arts students develop dishes, meals and menus with a healthy balance of a greater-than-ever variety of foods. 

In fact, being “mindful” in meal planning means that no food is inherently “bad.” Rather, all foods can be enjoyed—some less, some more—as long as these careful choices are consumed in healthy moderation. And understanding ingredients and their impact on health is essential. 

Teaching Food-Label Understanding
In the classes I teach at Kendall College, I stress that reading food labels effectively is another tool culinary students have to incorporate into dish development and meal planning. 

I explain to students that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) manages food-labeling laws. Certain items on the food label are required by law; such as identification or name of the food; name of the manufacturer, city, state and zip code; net quantity; ingredient list; and the Nutrition Facts panel, which includes a host of information. To help get points across, I capitalize on a tremendous teaching tool from the FDA: “The Food Label and You” video. 

Just under 30 minutes long, this entertaining and informative video instructs on a variety of label topics and includes a fun segment—“Are You Smarter than a Food Label?”—that spoofs a popular TV game show. The segment pits the FDA’s “Labelman” against a contestant in food-label knowledge with questions covering topics such as calories, serving size, servings per container, the 5-20 Rule and more.

I also share with students that food manufacturers' and suppliers’ health claims are statements approved by the FDA to call out specific health benefits. For example, the health claim, “Adequate calcium and vitamin D as part of a healthful diet, along with physical activity, may reduce the risk of osteoporosis in later life,” is a very specifically worded statement that must be used exactly as the FDA has written. Food manufacturers can petition the FDA if they want to change the wording, but it must be approved.

When a food is fortified, it has a nutrient—such as calcium, iodine, vitamin A or vitamin D—added to the food when that food did not contain that nutrient in its original form. An example of this is calcium-fortified orange juice. Orange juice does not contain calcium in its original form; the manufacturer has added it for a specific health benefit. 

Similarly, an enriched food has had nutrients added back into the product after these same nutrients have been removed. Wheat flour is an example. Wheat is refined to remove the germ and bran, which contain most of the B vitamins and iron. Enriched flour refers to flour to which these nutrients have been added back in.

Nutrient Content claims are FDA-approved statements that the manufacturer or supplier is allowed to place on the label to highlight or call attention to a benefit. Examples of such statements are “free,” “low,” “lean,” “extra lean,” “high in,” “good source of,” “reduced,” “less,” “light,” “more,” “% fat free,” “made with” and “healthy.” An FDA resource on approved health claims, Health Claims Meeting Significant Scientific Agreement (SSA), can be used as an in-class teaching tool.

Yet another valuable exercise in class is one I developed for my students: a nutrition-labeling worksheet. For this exercise, students are given a food label. My worksheet is simply a list of nine or 10 questions pertaining to the food label, and necessitates that students have a basic aptitude with culinary math. They can complete the worksheet as an in-class assignment or out-of-class project. 

For example, label-based questions I might ask my students include:

• How many calories in this product come from carbohydrate? From fat? From protein? What is the percentage of total calories in this product from carbohydrate? Fat? Protein?
• What does % Daily Values mean on a food label?
• List the ingredient that is present in the greatest proportion by weight, and the ingredient in the least proportion by weight.
• What does the ingredient list tell you about the product?

For this applied-learning exercise, which I’ve found very effective in enlightening students on the importance of understanding food labels, I recommend that instructors develop their own label-reading worksheet questions based on their own experience, teaching methods and style. 

Tomorrow’s professional cooks—in every foodservice-industry segment to which they aspire—must have a strong understanding of applied nutrition if they hope to be successful. Once culinary students are adept at understanding food labels, they will be better equipped to compare and select the foods that best serve their customers’ nutrition needs and demands.

Lorri Fishman MS, RDN, who served as manager of the Knowledge Center at the American Dietetic Association (currently the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics) for 11 years, now teaches nutrition science to culinary-arts students enrolled in Kendall College in Chicago. For more information about Kendall’s School of Culinary Arts, visit www.kendall.edu.