Nutrition Facts Game & Grocery Giveaway

For the majority of my adult life, I seem to have subconsciously subscribed to the idea that you only need to worry about what you eat if you're trying to lose weight. I wasn't trying to lose weight, so I was telling myself that I could eat whatever I wanted with no consequences. Obviously, I knew that wasn't really true, but I was willing to ignore that as I blissfully ate as much junk food as I wanted (which, combined with a total lack of exercise, contributed to a general feeling of weakness and lack of energy). Finally, near the beginning of this year, I started to feel a stronger drive to improve my diet and actually incorporate exercise into my life. It has been great so far! I am excited to feel stronger and more energetic, and I'm happy to be teaching my children about the importance of health and the roles that exercise and nutrition play in that!

Nutrition Facts Challenge

I was thinking about the Nutrition Facts charts that can be found on all of our food packaging in Canada and I wondered what kind of an idea I had of what was in different foods that I eat.  I decided to try an experiment: I grabbed a few cereals from my cupboard and took a picture of each with my phone (and of each of their Nutrition Facts tables).

I knew that the serving sizes were all different (one would be 3/4 cup of cereal, one would be 1 cup, and the oatmeal would be somewhere in between), but that the number of grams in each were about the same.  Then I ignored the top part (so that the "1 packet" serving size wouldn't give away which chart I was looking at) and I tried to guess which table belonged with which cereal.

How Did I Do?

The first thing that I thought would give it away was the amount of protein. I can remember someone at a gym that I went to (10 years ago) telling me that I needed to eat more protein, and she recommended Special K with Almonds.  So, remembering that, I thought that Special K would be the cereal with the most protein. I was very surprised to see that it actually had the lowest amount between these three!  I was also surprised to see how much sugar is in the Special K (but then I remembered I was comparing with plain Cheerios and plain Oatmeal, so I wasn't too surprised... but then I looked at the Alphabits in the cupboard and they've only got 2 more grams than the Special K!).

How to Read the Table

If you go to the Nutrition Facts website, you'll see that they recommend that you start by looking at the serving size (because it's not always the same amount that you would eat) and then take a look at the % daily value (sometimes shown as %DV).  If you are trying to get more fibre, for example, you'll see that between these three, the oatmeal would be your best bet because its %DV is highest.
The website suggests that a % lower than 5 is low and a % higher than 15 is high.

Family Game or Challenge

This could be a fun game to test your family on if you'd like to help them to learn how to better understand nutrition and the Nutrition Facts on our food packaging!  All you need are some food packages and a cell phone camera! :)

Giveaway

You can take a little quiz on the Focus on the Facts website, and enter a contest to win a $300 grocery gift card!

You can also enter my contest, here on the blog!  One of my readers will win a $100 Grocery gift card! Just fill out the form below, to enter! (Giveaway is open to residents of Canada, excluding Quebec)

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Disclosure: This post was a sponsored post. The opinions are completely my own.

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