Food shopping is becoming more and more an educational experience every day. It is important to really look at the labels of prepared foods not only for the calories, sodium and fat content, but also to find out just what makes up that chili mix or loaf of bread. An example I ran across recently was a lunch-box sized chocolate milk drink which I had thought was chocolate milk. Upon closer inspection of the label, I found water listed as the first ingredient. The amount of calcium this drink was providing was only a third of what the same-sized container of milk would have.
Bread is another area to compare labels in.
When you read the ingredients in a loaf of bread and find you need a degree in chemistry to understand why they are there, then it may not be what you want to eat. The easier it is to understand the list of ingredients in a product, the more likely that product will actually have nutritional value. There is no sense in buying food with empty calories, unnecessary additives, and few nutrients. For this reason it is especially important to buy high quality food which provides as much nutritional value as possible, so read the labels. With the changing of the seasons comes changes in the weather and the start of the cold and flu season.