Supermarket Smarts

Hi, my name is Jamie Davis and I'm a registered dietitian. I work with kids and families and teach them how to eat healthy. We're going to focus on a simple message of changing up the quality of your carbohydrates; mainly decreasing your added sugar and increasing your dietary fiber. So come with me and I'm going to teach you how to read food labels and choose food that are higher in fiber and lower in sugar.

Fruits and vegetable are an excellent source of dietary fiber. They do have natural sugars in them, but that's a good type of sugar, so were not going to worry about that. The fiber's located in the skin and seeds. The national recommendation is between 25 and 30 grams a day. Here is another tip. If you leave skin on certain type of vegetables you can really increase your fiber content.

TIP: Kids love baked potatoes and zucchini sticks; just keep the skins on for added fiber!

The cereal aisles presents challenges for most families. You kids probably have definite opinions on the types of cereal that they do or don't like. A simple rule of thumb is to choose a cereal that has under 10 grams of sugar and over 5 grams of fiber. Something I tell moms is to try mixing a high fiber cereal with one of your kids' favorites.

TIP: If your kids love the sugary stuff, try mixing in high-fiber cereal.

Choosing the right bread can also be a challenge. You want to look for two things: you want the label to say 100% whole wheat and you want to check the nutrition facts to make sure to have at least 5 grams of dietary fiber. You can also try switching out your flour tortilla and corn tortilla, for a whole wheat tortilla. This one has 21 grams of dietary fiber.

TIP: Make tacos and quesadillas with whole wheat tortillas.

Drinks or loaded with sugars. The USDA recommends less then 32 grams of added sugar a day. Just because its says 100% juice doesn't necessarily make it better. For instance, this 100% apple juice has 28 grams of sugar in it, compared to a soda that has 31.

Now it's time for me to check out I hope I was able to shed some light on often-confusing world of reading labels.