Read the Label. It's a Plan Z Diet Requirement!

Read the Label. It's a Plan Z Diet Requirement!

By: Zola

Chief Dieter

Plan Z Diet

AC Nielson is known best in the US for its work with television viewership ratings. They rate radio station listening, too. That’s all well and good but AC Nielson is actually a global information and measurement company. They conduct polls and surveys in over 100 countries all over the world.

I found out today that AC Nielson has conducted a couple of surveys that relate to consumer behavior in the super market. This information can prove very useful for those on the Plan Z Diet.

For example, I found out that according to AC Nielson survey research, only 21% of the population ever reads a food label on the products they buy. I should not be surprised. Until the last few years I was probably more influenced by TV commercials than I was by the label on the product. If they told me on TV that it was good for me, I believed them. Not so much anymore.

That leaves almost 80% of our population wandering uniformed through the grocery store, picking up products and putting them into their cart with no real education about what it is or what it will do to them when they eat it. On the Plan Z Diet we teach people how to read labels and the importance of being a conscious consumer.

People watch TV and then go out and buy what advertisers (food companies) tell them to buy. They push their cart through the aisles and pull things off the shelf that look pretty, or colorful, or tasty. And then, without any real regard for the contents in the package, they cook it up and eat it. That’s sad.

We do more to research what kind of car we are going to buy than what we put in our mouths to fuel our bodies.

AC Nielson also reported that out of the 21% of people who read a label, on average, only 43% of them are confident that they understand what they are reading. That’s ridiculously sad. This stuff should be taught in high school.

I’m not going to go into great detail on how to read a food label, but I will give you a quick rundown from the perspective of the Plan Z Diet. Before the Plan Z Diet, I was only interested in the calorie count. If it was low-cal I thought I was good to go. Now I know better. Buying low-calorie foods made me overweight.

Let’s look at this label for spaghetti. Before I knew better, this was one of my favorites.

First off, let’s look at the serving size at the top. You’ll see it says one cup. That’s one cup COOKED. Do you know what one cup cooked looks like on your plate? I assure you it looks NOTHING like the portion shown on an Olive Garden TV commercial. What they show in TV ads is a HUGE amount of spaghetti. They make sure the sauce amount is smaller and the spaghetti sticks out around the sides and sometimes even covers the very edge of the plate. That’s insane. A cup of cooked spaghetti is a proper portion. The pasta trade associations even refers to pasta as ‘a vehicle’ for sauce. It’s the sauce that’s good for you.

The other thing I want to focus on for today’s conversation is the number of grams of carbohydrates. There are 40 grams of carbohydrates in ONE cup of spaghetti. Most humans can’t handle more than about 80 grams of carbohydrates in one day before their weight would start to go up. This number varies by your height and weight as well as your individual metabolism, but this is a fairly good number to gauge with. So 40 grams of carbohydrates would be half of your carbohydrates for a full day. That doesn’t even take into account the carbohydrates that would be in the spaghetti sauce. And don’t get me started on the garlic bread.

A Snicker’s Bar has 37 grams of carbohydrates. Do you get my drift?

Believe me when I say it isn’t fat that makes you fat… it’s the carbohydrates. Pay close attention and READ YOUR LABELS.

More on this soon.

To read more of Zola's blogs CLICK HERE or head over to https://www.planzdiet.com/blog/