If you are ever wondering if a food product is good or not, no skill is as indispensable as reading labels properly. Sometimes it is easy to be fooled. Just because a food is low in fat doesn't mean it is low in calories. You can end up gaining weight on these products because you are eating more of them.

The first thing you need to figure out are how many calories each gram of each macronutrient holds. A gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories, a gram of protein contains 4 calories and 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories. It is obvious then that we want to avoid fat as much as possible because it contains over double the calories of the other 2! If something says it has 5 grams of fat in it you simply multiply 5 by 9 which will tell you that 45 calories in product A are made up of fat calories.

Now this is where things can get tricky. What if I told you that product A only has 250 calories in total? This would mean that 18 percent of the calories in this product come from fat calories. Now let us take a look at product B which has 7 grams of fat per serving. And if we look further at the serving size of product B we find it is 420 calories. Again we multiply 7 by 9 which tells us that 63 of the 420 calories per serving in product B are made up of fat. But if we look at the percentage we find that it is only 15 percent! In the end product B is lower in fat. So be careful of advertising claims, always look at the whole picture. Don't go by fat grams only.

Another great tip is to look at the order of the ingredients listed in a particular product. The ingredients always go in order from most to least. So if you pick up something and the first ingredient is "sugar" you know that it contains more sugar than anything else. Other names for sugar include dextrose, fructose, sucrose, glucose, corn syrup, honey and maple syrup. This information can be very helpful when reading food labels.

If you are monitoring any aspect of your diet such as calories for example always adjust the serving size to the portions you are going to take. You will always usually find the serving sizes near the top of the label. It is best to be as accurate as possible. Serving sizes are usually stated in packets, cups, grams or pieces.

You will also find cholesterol and sodium (salt) listed on the label. The Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) for cholesterol is 300 mg and for sodium it is 2,400 mg. Processed foods are especially high in sodium. And if we cut down on animal products cholesterol shouldn't be as big of an issue. The RDI are just guidelines, we don't need to follow them religiously. Everyone has different needs depending on their situation and if we follow the principles of good health we have learned so far these 2 factors shouldn't be a problem.

Randy McLean enjoys abundant health and is the sole creator of the Healthy Eating Tips web site. Randy has discovered early on what works and what doesn't. To start looking and feeling better visit http://www.healthy-eating-tips.com