A variety of products are marketed as diet foods. Fat free, low calorie, extra lean and light labels on a product can be confusing and sometimes misleading. Keep in mind that these words reflect specific numbers, and knowing how a product qualifies for a label will help you to determine which foods are truly healthy.
Light
If the label is referring to fat content, products that contain 1/2 the fat or 2/3 the calories of similar products are considered light. Usually, this is a food that has been altered to lower its amount of fat per serving. If the label is referring to the product's salt content, the item contains half the sodium of the product's original version.
Free
In order to qualify as fat free, sugar free or free of saturated fat, a product must contain less than 1/2 g of the fat, sugar or saturated fat. To be considered cholesterol free, it must contain 2 or fewer mg of cholesterol. A product containing 5 or fewer calories per serving may claim to have no calories. If a product contains fewer than 5 mg of salt, it may call itself sodium free. Free does not necessarily mean that the ingredient in question is not present. It means that the amount is small enough that, for food labeling purposes, it is considered negligible.
Low
Low-fat simply means that a product contains no more than 3 g of total fat or 1 g and 15 percent of total calories coming from saturated fat per serving. A product containing 40 or fewer calories per serving may label itself low-calorie. If it contains no more than 140 mg of sodium, it is low-sodium, and 20 mg or fewer of cholesterol qualify it as a low-cholesterol product.
Lean and Extra Lean
When shopping for meats, remember that the labels do reflect specific numbers as well. A meat must have fewer than 95 mg of cholesterol to call itself lean or extra lean. If each serving contains fewer than 10 g of fat and 4.5 g of saturated fat, it qualifies as lean. If it has fewer than 5 g of fat and 2 g of saturated fat, it is extra lean.
Final Thought
Keep in mind that some product manufacturers deflate serving sizes to make fat, sugar and calorie numbers appear smaller. If a potato chip label bases its nutritional information on 4 chips per serving, do some math to gain perspective on how many calories and grams of fat are in the serving you might actually have. You may also look a food up in the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference for more realistic numbers.
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