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For marching band performers, fueling your body with the right nutrients is crucial for staying energized during rehearsals. Nutrition Facts labels, found on almost every snack, provide key details about what you're eating—but they can be confusing.
This post will teach you how to read and understand these labels, helping you make healthier snack choices that will support your endurance and performance on the field. By mastering this skill, you'll be ready to fuel up and crush your next rehearsal!
1. Serving Size Matters
The very first thing you should look at on a Nutrition Facts label is the Serving Size. Sometimes, the servings size might be the whole container, sometimes not.
It’s important to know the how much the serving size is because the label tells you the nutrition information for that specific amount. So if you eat more or less than the serving size, you will have to do a little math to get the correct nutrition information for the amount you ate or plan on eating.
In the example below, the entire package has FOUR (4) total servings, with each serving size measured as 1 cup, or 227 grams. This means if you consumed the entire package, all the nutrition facts will be quadrupled (4x).
ATTENTION: Please be aware that the servings size on a label is not necessarily a “recommended” serving size for that product, it’s just the amount used to calculate the
nutrition facts.
2. Calculating Calories
Now that you know the serving size, you can figure out how many calories you are about to get from that product. Calories are the amount of energy we get from a food. As a marching athlete, it’s important to make sure you are getting enough calories to fuel you workouts/rehearsals/performances, and repair and build new muscle.
In general, most performers will need somewhere between 2000-4000 calories to function well. Everyone's needs are different, and you should seek help from a health professional to determine how many calories you need.
In our example below, there are 280 calories per 1 cup serving. So if you consume the entire package, you will have consumed 280 x 4 servings = 1,120 calories.
3. Nutrients You Need to Know
While there are a lot of different nutrients on the Nutrition Facts label, here are the ones you should probably be most concerned with:
Saturated Fat:
Too much saturated fat can be harmful to your heart and overall health. They can also increase inflammation which can decrease athletic performance. Try to limit saturated fat to no more than 10% of your daily calories.
Fiber: Most Americans don’t eat enough fiber. For athletes, fiber can help you stay full,
keep your energy levels steady, and help prevent constipation. If you want to avoid
feeling “sluggish” on the field, look for more high fiber food products!
Protein: In addition to needing enough calories to build and maintain muscle, your body
needs enough protein too. A good source of protein should be included with each of
your meals and snacks.
In our example below, there is 4.5 grams of saturated fat, 4 grams of fiber, and 15 grams of protein per serving.
4. Decoding % Daily Value
The % Daily Value is probably the most confusing part of the Nutrition Facts label. The
percentages are based off of a 2,000 calorie diet which doesn’t apply to everyone. But this
doesn’t mean you have to ignore the % Daily Value.
An easy way to tell is a product is “high” or “low” in a particular nutrient is by looking at the % Daily Vale; 5% or less is considered low while 20% of more is considered high. For example, from the label pictured here we can see this product is high in calcium because the % Daily Value is 25% which is greater than 20%.
A Note about the Ingredient List
In addition to the Nutrition Facts Label, most food products have an Ingredient list. This list
contains every ingredient in the product and lists them in descending order by weight.
This means that the first ingredient listed is the ingredient there is the most of in that product. For example, the ingredient list shown here has “stone ground whole wheat flour” as the first ingredient. That means there is more flour than any other ingredient in this product.
While some ingredients might be unfamiliar or sound scary, there is no reason fear. Often times they are just fancy names for vitamins and minerals that are added to the products to help keep them fresh. Like the “ascorbic acid” in this product is vitamin C, an important antioxidant that keeps our immune system healthy and helps repair tissues. All the food products on our shelves go through a rigorous approval process by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make sure all the ingredients are safe to eat. So there is no reason to avoid any specific ingredients unless you have a known allergy or dietary intolerance to them.
Nutrition Fact labels and ingredient list help us know more about the food we use to fuel our
bodies. As a marching athlete, the choices you make to which food you eat can make a huge
difference in your performance. Start checking out the Nutrition Facts label and ingredient list to make sure you are getting the best nutrition to fit your needs!
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-facts-label/how-understand-and-use-nutrition-facts-label
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