Product Labels
One of the first things they teach children in school about nutrition is to check the product labels to find out what is in the food you are eating. This is a good thing, to be clear, because knowing what you are eating can help you to balance your diet and ensure that you are putting good things into your body.
The problem is that the labels on products are not always adequately describing the content of the product. This is due both to the nature of the labels we find on our products and the (sometimes) blatant deception of the product creators. As a result, it is hard to tell if a product is healthy just by looking at its label.
Take the example of alfalfa as an ingredient in a food blend. Reading the label, what can we tell about this alfalfa? Do we know if it was grown organically? If it was harvested at the right time? Was the soil used to grow it in was properly nurtured? Is the alfalfa from leaves only or the whole stems with the cellulose that will irritate your intestines? If it was an extract, how was it preserved? And what is the particle size? The smaller the particle, the greater the surface are from which your body can extract nutrients …
In the end, we can’t answer these questions by reading the labels alone. The word “alfalfa” tells us very little…
