3 expert hints for choosing healthy packaged foods

Obesity is becoming a big problem for all ages and demographics in North America. A lot of it has to do with fatty, processed food we eat. It's convenient but not always healthy. Here are some simple ways to choose the healthy option when picking up that quick meal.

When you find a packaged food in the supermarket with a long list of ingredients on the label, just set it back on the shelf and look for a simpler version of the food. The alarming truth is, many of those ingredients are various kinds of sugars and chemical additives, and they're not put there for you — they're there to benefit the company that processes the food. They "enhance" the looks, taste or shelf life — which is all about marketing and shipping and not at all about your health.

Many "Nutrition Facts" labels are designed to make you think you're getting fewer calories than you really are. For example, labels list the nutrients on a per-serving basis. But be sure to check the "serving size" and "servings per container" lines. The chocolate bar that most people would eat all by themselves in a single sitting may say that it contains two servings. If you saw "100 calories" on the label, you must make a mental adjustment — you're actually eating two servings, so you're getting 200 calories.

A calculator is the best tool for helping you figure out what the food industry doesn't want you to know: the actual value of the nutrients in the food you're buying. For example, say you're trying to find out which breakfast cereal is more nutritious. One box lists serving size as one cup, but the another might list a serving as "about 24 biscuits." You can't really open the box in the store to see how that stacks up against the one cup, so the only way to compare unit to unit is to use grams, which are listed on both packages. Gram for gram, their nutrients are very similar: roughly the same calories, fibre, carbs, protein and fat. Even the amount of sugars might be the same.

Knowing what to look for when you're going down the grocery store aisle can help you make healthier choices.