(soft music) - Hi, my name is Emma Liu, and I'm a registered dietician with Nashville General Hospital.

And I'm here today so that we can talk about the importance of reading nutrition labels when it comes to choosing your food options.

(soft music) Things that we need.

Of course, healthy fats, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, coming from our nuts and seeds, healthy fish sources, our healthy sources of carbs.

So, mostly coming from whole grains.

Those have a lot of vitamins and a lot of fiber to go along with them.

Lean protein to provide us with muscle development and maintaining all of our antibodies and our immunity.

And then, of course, focusing on that fiber for foods that are very satiating and satisfying so that we can stay full and not constantly snack throughout the day.

(soft music) When we're looking at a food label, we really wanna start from the top down.

And the top covers how many calories is in it, what the serving size is, which are all in bold because these are really important information.

And then of course, as we go down, we start seeing the fats and the sodium, which is the amount of salt.

And that can affect anybody with high blood pressure, can also cause high blood pressure if we eat too much of it.

And then we have the fiber as a part of the total carbohydrates, and the sugar, of course.

Protein.

And then at the very bottom of the food label, you do have the ingredients list.

The ingredients are listed in concentration of what is most present in that food.

So if you're buying a chicken noodle soup, you don't want something that has chicken listed as the very last ingredient.

You also don't want a cereal that has sugar listed as the very first ingredient.

(soft music) When we think about eating healthy, we should be thinking about eating unprocessed foods, foods that really exist more so in like their natural forms and haven't gone through the additives, haven't gone through the processing, things that don't really stay on the shelf for that long.

(soft music) Again, I'm Emma Liu.

I hope you found these tips helpful, and thank you for joining us for your good health.

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