If you are interested in losing weight, you must know that the most important step in lowering body fat and maintaining a healthy body weight is making the right choices when it comes to food and nutrition. You could exercise five days a week for an hour, but if you continue eating
Wendy's hamburgers or Hungry Man frozen dinners, you will not see a drop in weight.
For a proper weight loss approach to work, the nutrition is more important than the physical activity. Luckily, if the Institute of Medicine has its way, a food's nutritional value could be as easy to read as the Energy Star label found on washers, dryers, computer monitors and more.
A New Rating SystemCalling for a simplified label system, a report to federal regulators proposed a new type of label that would go on the front of different food packages. These labels would show the number of calories per serving, and implement a rating system. The rating system would be comprised of stars. Each food item would receive anywhere from zero to three stars depending on how healthy that specific food is.
The Institute of Medicine, which is part of the nonprofit National Academies, believes the number of stars should be based on only three things: extra sugar,
saturated or Trans fats, and sodium. The Institute explained that they chose these three nutrients because they are key factors that are linked to major illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
The report, which was requested by Congress, was submitted to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a bid to establish a uniform labeling system that could successfully replace
misleading labels on the front of packages - labels that routinely entice grocery shoppers. There has been a long battle between food companies, public health advocates and health regulators over how nutritional information is presented to the consumer, and how different labels affect how shoppers spend their money.
With obesity continuing to rise in the United States, more and more Americans are becoming self-aware and are taking proactive steps towards combating obesity and unhealthy eating habits. School systems are removing sodas from their vending machines, sweets from their lunch menus and providing healthier lunches. Many companies are offering incentives to join a local gym, and sometimes they will even have synchronized breaks so every employee can participate in an in-house cardio session.
In the same vein, this new labeling system will make choosing the right foods much easier. This can be attributed to its simplicity, because instead of a flurry of numbers and colorful pictures, shoppers will easily be able to tell that a food with three stars is much better than another with no stars.
