Wellness Hustle

Wellness Hustle (00:44)
Welcome back to another episode of the wellness hustle. I'm Brit and I'm here with my cohost, Sasha. Together. We're here to break down the complexities of wellness for high achieving women. And what are we talking about today? Today we are diving into all things food labels. Yes. Ingredients. We are super excited about it. So ingredients, but you know how people think of labels that think of just calories. Yeah. Yeah. That's, feel like my generation is all raised and.

Every client I have, always have to say, when you turn around the package, what do you look at? And they're always like calories. I'm like, wrong answer. We do need to acknowledge calories, but the most important thing is the ingredients. So today we're going to dive into it. We're going to dissect the labels. Yes. I'm going to tell you how to read them properly, what to look for. I'm so excited. I can barely contain myself. I also just had a meat stick, so feel like I have extra energy happening in my body. I had two meat sticks.

Yeah, I just think that this is something that really affects us all and that you don't even realize. And you saying like when people look at the label and they look at calories, I had to be conditioned to not do that because of some things in my life that like required me to look at the ingredients first. And the first thing I look at is ingredients. And then the next thing I look at is amount of sugars, grams of sugars. Yes. And then grams of protein is the next thing I look at. Okay. So I'm so excited to break this down. Let's jump into it.

What are some of the other reasons why we should care about nutrition labels? Well, there's some things that are hiding in the foods. Okay. So why butter has something else than just cream and butter?

And some butter does. I just don't understand that. You wouldn't even think until I went to see my husband's mom and we stayed there and they had butter that I've never seen that brand before. I was just curious. turned around and there's all, mean, there's a whole list, two pages long with things that they were in this butter, supposedly. Why? Right. So we need to even things like that, like you think salt.

salt is just going to be sea salt, but it could have sugar in there. You could have other preservatives. So it's very important to look, turn around the package, look what's in there. Don't just assume salt is just going to be salt. Don't just assume butter is just going to have cream in it and nothing else. Don't just assume that milk is just going to have milk in it.

I think that's really the key thing too, is making assumptions around what you think is in your food. Because like I've had, I've purchased cashew milk and I'm like, it's just blended up cashews and then the milk is pulled out. And water, like why is this? Gums and coloring and natural flavors and other things.

Also, I wanted to talk about the serving sizes, especially when it comes to sugar. Okay. So this will hide in the drinks. So I used to buy this kombucha and I would get the bottle and the bottle wasn't huge. It was like, it looked to me like one serving. I don't know, call me crazy, but I look at, I didn't even think about looking at the servings.

I turned around and I had five grams of sugar. I'm like, okay, not bad, know, compared to other kombuchas that had like 26 grams of sugar. And then I was buying it and drinking it. And then one time for some reason I looked and it had two servings. I was like, wait a minute, this is two servings. So this is not five, it's 10 grams of sugar now. So you have to be really careful when it comes to sugar and servings and also

I mean, calories and fats, all of this adds up. So we kind of have to be mindful about the servings.

So serving sizes definitely can be deceptive. mean, again, this one, I hate to bring up chips again, but I just fucking love them. And I can eat a bag all by myself and there's like four servings in there. Yeah.

and it's not good and then you know it be more than four it could be more than four depends on the bag there's party sizes there.

just can't keep those in the house. Yeah. so like what are, I want to break down the nutritional label. are the key things to focus on when I'm looking at a nutritional label? Okay. So there's two different areas, right? One is like your protein, your fiber, your calories, your fats, all of the things. And that's what people normally look at. Right. then their second one is the ingredients. So nutritional component components and ingredients. Yes.

So macros and ingredients. Yes. So it depends again on your bio individuality. If you guys listened our previous podcast, how much fat, how much protein, how many carbs you need throughout the day. So you kind of have that in mind, but one thing with carbs is interesting. fiber is a form of carb and it's going to be put together with total carbs for you. So

When you look at the package and you see carb total, say it would be like 15. Okay. But then underneath, it's going to be fiber and say fiber says 10 grams. So that means total carb is there only five grams. So it's not bad. So that's a little trick and little, like, I don't know how many people know about this, but the fiber is not going to be absorbent to your body. It's just like, remember we talked to you guys about in previous.

episodes that is just going to run through you and clean you out type of thing, helps digestion, cleaning out the bad things and feeding the good things in your gut. So we don't count fiber as part of the carb and part of the calories. So the total calorie is going to be less.

Got it. So if you have, I'm just going to repeat what you said just to make sure I got this in my brain. if total carbohydrates is, it's including the fiber, the grams of fiber. So if total carbohydrates says 15 grams and fibers says 10 grams, I can subtract 10 from the 15 total carbs. Yep. Because fiber doesn't count. I know, but that's why you always want to eat like say,

full vegetable, not the juice of the vegetable because that's fiber. Why? Explain that to me. So by taking fiber out of the fruit or vegetable, right? Okay. You're getting rid of that bulk that's going to slow down the digestion and slow down your blood sugar regulation. Like, so if you're taking out the fiber, the sugars are going to go straight into your bloodstream.

And you're not going to have the fiber to slow down the digestion. So when fruits and vegetables are in their full form, their original form, like God intended, like whatever you believe caveman caveman. Yeah. when they're in their full original form, they have more fiber in them. when we, they have fiber in them. When, you juice them, we take whatever, if you ever made a green juice and you have all that gulk and stuff that you throw away, that's fiber.

So all the shit that's left over in the sugar in the water, that's it. There's some vitamins, there's some vitamins and minerals, but not much, but that's mostly sugar water at this point. This makes so much sense because we've talked about my ADHD and other in another episode, bio individuality and epigenetics and things like that. And whenever I was doing juice cleanses, because I lived in Southern California and was doing everybody was doing everybody. was like, yeah, it was a, it was a trend. I was on it.

like, let's do it. And I was having that was right around the time I got prescribed medication for depression and anxiety because I felt manic because the sugar and it was probably because of the sugars. It's probably because you know that people who have mental health, they literally prescribe keto. Really diet. Yes. See, love a keto diet. Right. So it's good for your brain.

Okay. So just out of curiosity, because when I turn a package over, the first thing I look at is the ingredients list. I'm looking for anything I can't pronounce.

Same. I'm looking for any seed oils. I'm looking for any of my personal allergens. Same. Okay. So that's where you start to. I start with the ingredients always. And I always tell every of my clients, don't even start with the calories because you're wasting your time. If the ingredients are shitty, then you're going to put it away anyway. Yeah. So just look at the ingredients. That's like your first stop. Like if that's going to get cleared, then you can start looking at, you know, all the macros there. Yeah.

But if the ingredients are shitty, if there's bad oils in there, if there's things you don't know what they are, you have to Google, you might want to put it back. Okay. So on that note with the Googling, I want to talk about a little, cause when I two years ago started getting into seed oil, like not having seed oils in my diet, this was when people thought I was bat shit crazy. I also learned that if the ingredient list, and I saw that you put this in our notes too, if the ingredient list is really long. Yes.

I will actually just put it back. Agreed. if it is, then, so there's like this kind of like, and you get more used to it as you practice it more, just like with anything, but I'll look at the ingredients list. If the list is too long, I put it back. Like if it's, and when I say long, you'll start to recognize it'll be literally like three inches of 0.5. And small letters. So if you're approaching my age, you're to have to have readers. Yeah. Then you put it back. Put it back.

Then the next thing, let's say it's a shorter ingredient list. Then I'll start looking for my key things, which is like, do I need xanthan gum in it? No, no. Do I need any canola vegetable seed oil, grape seed oil, sunflower seed oil? I'm not having any of that. If you see three sorts of sugars right away, put it away, right? Yeah. I didn't think of that. If there's like cane sugar plus corn syrup with something else. Corn syrup. I'll just put it right back.

Yeah, but yeah, right.

does the nutritional label help

with specific goals like balancing blood sugar or weight loss? Okay. So let's take additional label as an information. What's inside of this box? Obviously it's telling you exactly what it is or it's made out of. say you buying chicken, you know, a lot of times you're not going to have, if it's not a ground chicken, it's not going to tell you the protein, you know, you have to Google it.

With that kind of stuff, if it's packaged, it's gonna tell you protein, it's gonna tell you carb, it's gonna tell you fiber, like we just talked. It's gonna tell you, know, even minerals on the box, right? If they've been added. So you can take that information and if you say you have a certain goal, like you wanna hit so many grams of protein a day. So is this gonna support your goal, this food? So you look at the protein, maybe it's like,

five grams of protein for the whole serving. Is that going to help you to get to your protein goal? Maybe not. Maybe you put it away. You know, maybe you don't need that. Maybe you look for something with a higher protein content. So I think that's how you can utilize labels to just see how they are supporting your goals. like something like bison, for example, if you're picking a meat, bison is a very lean protein and a very high

From my understanding, just from reading labels, it has less fat and a hell of a lot more protein than most of the competitors, other meat, red meat.

But if you have less fat and higher protein, Yeah. Means that you're going to have less calories. Correct. And you're getting more protein. Correct. So let's just

Most people know this, but maybe some people don't. So we have protein, we have carbs, and we have fat, and they all have calories, right? Calories are energy that you get from food that you eat, right? It's just how we count energy that you get. So protein and carb have four calories, okay? Fat has nine.

okay. So that's your ratio. You like your proportion. Yeah. So if you eat more fat, that's why they thought it might get fat. If you eat more protein, so protein, right has low calories, but also is satiate you because the thermal effect of protein, meaning for your body to break it down takes a lot from your body. So

for you to eat protein, not only that you build muscle by eating protein, but also you expend a lot of energy by breaking it down. Does that make sense? Yeah. So each food you eat, that's why I always say the whole foods are much better. So if you say you eat nuts instead of nut butter, it's harder for your body to break down the nuts. You have to chew it physically, then you have to break it down in your stomach. So it's going to take

more out of your body to break down the nuts. So you're going to actually expand some of the energy to break down the nuts as opposed to the nut butter. Does it make sense? Yeah. So I have a question then in regards to, and this might be a little bit off topic, but like, let's say for example, you're talking about energy within the body, but are you burning more calories to break down that item? Okay.

So then if we're talking about calories in, calories out, right? Like everybody I think knows that term. My mom fucking grilled that into my head my whole life. Right, that's where it goes wrong. That's where it goes wrong because there's gonna be calories on nuts and there's gonna be calories on that butter. And it might be the same, but for your body to break down the nuts is gonna take more energy.

than the nut butter. So the end result, it's not necessarily calories in and out from that piece of paper that you just read. It's more like how many calories did I spend to break down this meal also. So you have to think about that's where we lose the in and out. That's where it's not 100 % accurate. Okay, I love that. That's like super helpful information. My next question for you is like,

When it comes to, so I have issues with my energy consistently throughout the day and I've been working on different things for that and we can get into like a full episode of this later. But since we're talking about calories right now, I have found that like I need to eat more calories. Am I, is my burning of those calories while I'm eating the nuts also adding onto the calories I burned at the gym and therefore making me more tired?

Like how does that work? what is it physically? Are you becoming tired from it or is it actually just fueling your body? Well, you have only so much energy in your body. Okay. Right. So in you, sometimes you just sit there and think, and then we'll take your energy out. Right. So, so we use energy for different things in our throughout the day.

So I don't think it's sufficient amount of chewing the knots is going to throw you over the edge where you're going to need a nap. but just want permission to nap. I had some knots and it's a lot out of me. I need a Sasha prescribed nap. Yes. But, you know what I mean? Like it's just going to be pulling out of the total energy expenditure of your day. Yeah.

So just because it says there's 350 calories in nut butter and 350 calories in that same full form, God intended nut. You're actually getting less calories from the God intended nut because that sounds terrible. terrible, but yes, but you're following, you're following. But that nut actually expends energy. your net is not that 350 calories. Love that.

So with all of this talk of

you know, looking at the nutrition label, I think you can get really overwhelmed. I think with a lot of the things we talked about, you can get really overwhelmed. And I would challenge everybody to just kind of like, take it one thing at a time. Like if you want to have less sugars, just make sure you're paying attention to sugars. Or for me, I eliminated seed oils, and then that was all I was focused on eliminating seed oils. So every time I went my ingredients list, and you can just keep adding on new things and it'll it'll feel less chaotic. So just pick one thing.

But how do we use them as a guide and not like obsession? Rulebook obsession. Yeah. Well, it depends where you are in your health journey. To me, I think it's important that I'm putting everything clean into my body. So you have to be honest with yourself and see where you are, you know, on that journey with the packaged food. Are you ready to say goodbye to your Oreos? Because let me tell you, there's some better options there.

You can find Oreos, they're not Oreos. They taste like Oreos, but they don't have majority of the crap in them. So maybe think about what can you, you know, kind of find different brands. Yeah. Explore with different brands of your favorite foods. Because now that this, you know, wellness kick has been for a while, you know, for people, there's a lot of brands out there that are catering.

to customers like that. And I feel like it's gonna get bigger and bigger. What I started to notice on the packaging, we talked about packaging our previous episode is that you'll see they will say in big letters in the front, only five ingredients. Yeah, only three ingredients. So I'm okay, I'm interested now. wanna pick this up and I wanna see what are those three ingredients or what are those five ingredients?

So they're starting to get smart and targeting again. Yeah. And marketing. Yeah. I think that that's like when you start to get, you know, marketing and like retail and everything. We talked about the packaging and start paying attention to the colors that you're attracted to and the things that, you know, you're being marketed, like something is being greenwashed and saying that it's an all natural thing. And it's like, it's not, that doesn't, that's not a monitored thing. They can put anything they want in there and that could be manipulated in any way, or form.

But saying there's three ingredients on the front of the packaging and then turning that over and seeing three ingredients like that is great marketing. Great. And it's a beneficial thing for you and for the people in your family and again, like Sasha said, the industry is adapting to what the consumers want. That's in their best interest as well.

the more that we pay attention to these things and you make these decisions for yourself, these healthier choices, the more that the industry will shift as well. Yep. And also say you want something like Oreos, you can always Google what are the brands that make fake healthy Oreos and they're going to populate for you. You're going to see, and you can just look for those store. I mean, there's a thing for everything now. Yeah. Like an alternative. Exactly.

thank you so much for tuning in, listening us here as we dissecting the labels for you guys. If you have any questions, let us know.

don't forget to subscribe and download so you never miss an episode. Next week we will be back tackling all new things for you, all new topics for you. Until then, we hope you squeeze the most out of this one sweet life you have and we will see you later. See you guys later.