Q. I am bombarded daily by ads telling me what foods to buy. A. Pay more attention to what manufactures print on their labels than what they say in their ads. The Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers to list on their labels the ingredients of most products by common names and weight and additives such as colors and flavors. Most manufactures include nutritional information whether required or not. The amount per serving of calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat and sodium are often listed and in that order.
Some manufactures now print the amounts of cholesterol, fatty acid, and potassium on their labels.
There are some 300 foods that are exempt from FDA listing requirements. Jellies, jams, peanut butter, ketchup, mayonnaise, milk, cheese and peanut butter are examples. A product cannot be called peanut butter, for instance, unless it is 90 percent peanuts. You should consider purchasing Nutritive Value of Foods, published by the United States Department of Agriculture.