All the health experts will tell you to read the labels carefully when you shop to make sure you're buying the right stuff for your family -- and avoiding as much junk as possible.
But what can you do when you don't know if the L Rhamnosus and Acesulfame Potassium listed on the yogurt container are ingredients that are good for you or not? I just heard about a new web site called LabelWatch.com that lists all the ingredients in foods you buy at the grocery store and color codes them so you know which products are fair game to consume and which you might want to leave on the store shelf.
It breaks the ingredients into three categories -- beneficial, coded with green; OK, coded with orange; and cautionary, coded with red. Obviously you want more greens than reds in the foods you buy. If you click on one of the coded ingredients in the list, a box pops up with more information about why that ingredient is considered harmless or not.
There's also an alphabetical listing of food additives so you can search by that as well if there's one in particular you're curious about.
It all sounds very scientific, but the site is designed in a fairly straightforward way, so it's easy to read. If you're a label reader or want to start doing it more diligently, it's a good place to get more information.
And FYI? L Rhamnosus? That's considered beneficial.
Acesulfame Potassium? Potassium's good, right? Apparently not this kind. Who knew?
