Nutrition labels and what to look out for

Welcome back to the Kidney Stone Diet Podcast, the show about reducing your risk for kidney stones and living your best life. I'm your host and fellow student, Jeff Sarris, and I'm here, as always, with our resident nurse and professional kidney stone expert, Jill Harris.

Well, hello, Jeff, how are you?

Yeah, I'm good. It's always good to see you. This is another day of getting a bunch of podcast episodes in and I know you were working on some, I don't want to say secret, but some exciting stuff that we're going to be launching in the coming months.

Yes, I'm very excited. Although, as all of my patients know, I have been resistant in doing this for a long time, and they're like, "Jill, please make us some recipes. We need to figure out what we can eat, what we can make, blah, blah, blah." So, yes, I'm in the middle of cooking really simple recipes for kidney stone patients.

And, by the way, they're just healthy recipes for everybody. These are things that I eat, and we're getting them all together, and it's been– I'm glad that my patients have pushed me to do it

Because it's been a lot of fun taking the pictures, writing the content for it, tweaking recipes so they're kidney stone compliant. It's been great fun. I'm very– I'm very grateful to my patients, for sure.

Yeah, for sure. And it is just going to help be able to help so many more people with this because that is a big question, like, "What can I eat?" The "What can't I eat?" is almost the easy part, because you're like, "Oh, I won't eat spinach and almonds." And then it's like, okay, this other stuff, but where do I go from here?

Exactly. Look, when– when somebody's asking you to change your diet, no matter what you have, it's so overwhelming. So many people come to me, my heart always feels so filled with like empathy because

They are– not only are they sick, but now somebody's telling them to change their whole lifestyle. Well, really, how the hell do you do that without support, help, and compassion, I mean, you know, and time, by the way, it takes a lot of time to teach people really how to do that because each person is so incredibly different with different medical conditions, sensitivities, food allergies, all of it, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that's– it's going to be exciting. So, it should be coming out, hopefully, just a handful of weeks after this podcast comes out. But, I think we'll dive right into the topic for this week and we are going to–

Okay, what is it, Jeff? What are you going to– what are you going to throw at me right now?

Yeah, we're going to look at nutrition labels and how to actually read the packages of the products that we're purchasing.

All right, I love talking about nutrition labels. You know, I'm 57 and we were– my generation was brought up, you look at fat and calories, that's it. You don't need to know nothing about anything else, so that's all you need to know.

And so there's a lot of people my age who get kidney stones, so they're not– they're not trained to look at anything but calories and fat.

So there's so much more to a nutrition label than that. When you're looking at a nutrition label, first of all, hold on. Hold on.

I'm screaming about this all the time on my Facebook page. When you're at the grocery store, don't be looking at something like this, you're looking at the front of the label. "Ooh, no sugar.

This is– this is going to make me skinny minnie.

100% heart," blah, blah, blue, all this kind of stuff. Your husband's going to love you again. Ooh, buy me.

That's what the front of the label says, okay? But then when you turn it around, you're like– Well, I'm going to ask you guys, are you turning it around? Because most of you aren't.

You look at the front of the label because the food marketing people know exactly what you want right now. They– they know you want no added sugar, okay?

They know you want gluten-free, even though most of you ain't even gluten sensitive, okay? So, low-cal. If the word "skinny" is on it, guess who's buying it?

Most of you, okay? "Skinny" don't mean nothing. Now, so instead of just reading the front of a package, turn it around, Buster Brown, look at your nutrition label.

You can look at calories, I do. That's part of that nutrition label.

Also, before you look at anything else, look at the serving size. Look at that serving size, it matters. First of all, did you know that the serving size is really not what's recommended for you, but it's what most people eat?

This is what I've read. I push back on that because Ben & Jerry's, they say that there's four servings in that little pint. I beg to differ.

If you're having a shitty day, that's one serving,

Okay? We all know that's true. But look at the serving size, then look at the rest of the stuff, okay?

So, you want to look at calories, that's important. You don't want to be– if you eat, if you overeat calories, you will gain weight. If you eat less calories, you will lose weight, typically, unless you have other things going on.

Look at the serving size, look at the fat, look at the saturated fat. That's what you really want to know, how– how much saturated fat is in there. For people who are on keto, God bless you, do your thing.

But that's just something to know, okay? You want to look at how much fiber is in your product. You want to look at how much sugar is in your product, and then underneath, all the labels have changed, so added sugar is now parsed out.

That's really what you want to focus on. If there's a lot of added sugar in that product, you may not want to purchase it, okay? The other things you want to look at, you want to look at calcium.

That's always on the bottom. You want to look at your protein. For diabetics, you want to pay attention to protein, you want to pay attention to potassium, you want to pay attention to, things like that.

You want to pay attention to sodium. If a product is gluten-free, it typically has more sugar and salt,

Because once you take away the gluten, it's going to taste el crappo. So, they stuff it with more sugar and salt. If it's a gluten-free, low-sugar product, there's going to be a heck of a lot of sodium in it.

So, notice that on the Kidney Stone Diet, one of the– the two elements of it, very important, lower sodium, 1,500 mg to 2,000 mg a day, and low added sugar, 25 grams of added sugar for women,

38 g of added sugar for men. That adds up quickly. Look at your yogurts.

Don't be looking at the front of the yogurt package and say, "Oh, it's yogurt, delicious." Turn it around. How much sugar is in that? I bet you a Snickers bar has less.

So, look at it. Look at your labels. If it were– if it were up to me, what I would really want you to look at, sugar and salt, that's what I would want you to look at.

And next after that, calcium.

Notice, there's a lot of products that you think have calcium in it and they don't, so notice the calcium level. Calcium was, annoying because it was always written as a percentage. So, now, the– the nutrition labels have changed, so they're a lot clearer.

Government has changed them, so they're a lot clearer for consumers. Calcium's now written in milligrams, so you can see it clearly. The other thing, like I said, they parsed out added sugar.

That's a big change that the food people didn't want you– didn't want to happen, but the government wanted that to happen because, diabetes, heart attacks, right? So, sugar is, something that we really need to limit because it affects every organ in our body, fatty liver disease, all of it.

So, that's very important. So, I guess if it were up to me, the biggest things, if you're eating a product, typically, that's lower in sugar and lower in salt, it's going to be a relatively healthy product, like a vegetable or fruit. So, I'll say this too, Jeff, and then you can cut me off.

"Well, Jill, what about fruit? It's high in sugar." It's not added, God put it in there. All right, well, God didn't put sugar in honey, but you're considering that's added.

Yes, because honey is typically in the ingredient list, so it's added into the product. So, another way, if– if just say you had a– a label, because not all food manufacturers had to change their label right away. People who netted less than a million dollars a year have extra time to change those labels because it's very costly.

So, some of– so, some, labels may not be parsed out to show the added sugar. If you want to know if there's added sugar in there, please look at your ingredient list. It tells you everything, so the nutrition label is not just it by itself.

Go downstairs,

After the label, and look at all the ingredients. Now, if there's anything that ends with an "-ose", if you see brown sugar, brown syrup, molasses, honey, all that is extra, brown rice malt, all kinds of junk, and they use it, so it– so it's a little sneaky, you don't realize it's sugar, okay? Now, that being said, everybody,

Look, I have my products that I always watch my calories, so I have some products, and you will see them in my recipes, where it's like no sugar added, maple syrup. And you may set– you may say, "Oh, look at you, sister, you Miss Health Nut, there's a lot of junk in that ingredient list." So, they put artificial things in there to make it a zero-calorie, zero-sugar, food.

So, I will put a bip, not a boop, a bip of a little bit to give a sweetness to the food I'm eating. So, why I'm telling you that, well, I'm always transparent. My patients know exactly what I do.

But the other reason I'm telling you that is I am not expecting everybody who listens to me to have organic, $100 million, flour. I mean, you know what I'm saying? Sometimes, you– so what if you want artificial sugar sometimes?

I really don't care about that. If you're having it every day in huge quantities, you may want to rethink that. But sometimes, you– you– you want to aim for it's good enough.

And maybe your biggest thing is you really need to cut down on sugar right now because you're an addict and you're a diabetic, and you're overweight, so you may have to use a sugar substitute sometimes. I don't care. It's not a big deal, okay?

All right. I digress. You know I always do, Jeff.

You got to cut me off.

No, I mean, that's really good because that is the thing that– I mean, we can rewind for a second and go back to how you said replacing things with sugar and salt. I mean, low fat, most low fat products, it's the same thing. It'd be like cardboard without a bunch of sugar and salt.

And so you really need–

But Jeff, you– you weren't alive back then because you're a baby, but we were all chowing on SnackWell's, okay? So, a SnackWell cookie was zero fat, but nobody ever paid attention to sugar because nobody was talking about that. So, what does that mean?

Like what we do now with kale and spinach and almonds, when someone says, "Oh, it's low this," we eat– we didn't have two SnackWell's, we had a whole row. So, you know, people overdo it when somebody's– when somebody says, " it's– it's healthy for you," we just eat as much as we want, right?

Yeah, so it's important to actually look then. I mean, just seeing those, catchphrases and marketing jargon on the front doesn't tell you the whole picture, give you the whole picture. So, actually, I wanted to ask one more thing because you have something like orange juice.

That wouldn't have had added sugar, but it– it's missing all the constituent components of the orange. How does that play into your approach?

So, I love your question. You always ask great questions. Here's the deal.

So, I wouldn't suggest that diabetics try to get their calcium from orange juice, and because it is very high in regular sugar, even regular sugar, because it's all concentrated, right? And so you're taking out all the pith, you know, so there's no fiber in it, either. So, right, you're just getting a, a shot right, right to your, you know, veins with, arteries with sugar.

I wouldn't, personally, I wouldn't eat, drink orange juice, but some people use it for their calcium. Here's the rub, though. If you look at orange juice in the grocery store, and even though I don't drink it, I look at it because it's what I do for a living and I have to teach patients about it, if you look at it, vegans will use orange juice as a source for calcium, but the darn thing is the lower sugar ones

Tend not to have any calcium in them. The ones that they put calcium in tend to be the full sugar ones. So, it's kind of annoying.

You have to look around, that's been my experience with it. So, don't assume, that's why I always say, after 30 years of eating healthy, whenever I see a new product, I always turn it around. I never– it's not like I'm above, fooling myself.

I've definitely brought stuff home and gone, "Oh, my god, how did I not turn it around, Buster Brown? Jill, come on."

You know, so, you have to do it with every product. And orange juice is one of those things, like I said, yogurt is one of those things, look at mustard, look at ketchup, so filled with salt, but you would never think of, anything unhealthy in those condiments. Why do you love them?

Because they're salty, that's why, and sugary, by the way. So, yes, orange juice is a great example,.

And we're back. A little technical difficulties there.

Haha!

But, like I mean, we were talking about, juice and orange juice, specifically, and, the sugar content. I'm not sure how much of it we got just because I ran out of storage on the computer, so if we could maybe rewind for a second just, to recap that.

Yeah, I think orange juice is, look, it's, it's a, I don't mind vegans– my dog is moving around, hi, a little Luke. I don't mind vegans using it to, because the bigger issue is they need calcium, okay, and they can get it from there. But, you know, just pay attention.

I don't want diabetics drinking orange juice, per se, it's a lot of sugar at once, even though it's not even added sugar. So, and, and that goes along with, you know, people eating 10 pieces of fruit.

You know, people say, "Well, fructose isn't that healthy for you." I'm not worried about it, but at the same time, I'm always careful. I don't want people eating 10 apples a day, either. So, again, people are always like, "You know, Jill, we're not that stupid." And I'm not saying nobody's stupid, I'm just saying what I hear every day with people do.

So, you know, I've been told a lot of things over the last 21 years, so I'm pretty well versed on what people do and, so I don't want people overeating fruit, too. The other thing with juicing, and I know we're supposed to talk about labels, but there's always so much that just cascades off things. So, juicing,

In general, I had a couple patients yesterday that juiced, and now I'm telling them, "Look, man, you're stripping all the fiber away." I certainly don't mind if someone has a little juice, but people are having 32 oz of juice every day. That's a lot of sugar. And, also, you're not chewing.

These people also are overweight that I spoke to. So, when we tell people, you know, when people start juicing, they're like, "Oh, I'm so healthy." Yeah, but it's not that satisfying after a while. You're not chewing, you're not getting any fiber.

I'm not a juicing fan. Again, you may hate me for saying that. It's just my opinion.

So, have a little bit of juice, you could have whatever you want of a little bit, but be careful when you're having a hard time carrying that big jug of juice in the car to go to work, it's too much.

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, with juicing, too, that is a lot of times people have like a lot of weight loss and a lot of– there's these success stories, like there's a documentary, what is it called, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead".

Yes, "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead".

Like, really, I really enjoyed that one and it's all about juicing, but a lot of times what people miss in the, the showing, like the showcasing of juicing is they took out the garbage and replaced it with juice. Taking out the garbage is such– such a big part of these transitions and usually like with a diet shift, that's one of the major– one of the major parts.

So, you can almost go to anything sometimes to lose weight and it's like, "Oh, all McDonald's," or all whatever, but it doesn't mean it's better for you.

Exactly, I totally agree with that, right? So, and again, look, if somebody comes to me and they say, "Look, Jill, I'm going to continue drinking gin most of the day and I'm still going to only use fast food," I'll be like, "Good, if that's where you want to start, that's right on, but let's just half the amount of what you're doing, and guess what, you'll be healthier, okay?"

Because you're having less of it, you know? So, it's just like, again, it comes down to a portion size. If somebody came to me, which they don't, but if they– somebody wanted to quit smoking, I'd just be like, "Okay, so, you know, just smoke less, you'll be healthier until you don't smoke anymore." So, the– the problem is always portion.

Look, nobody's going to sell a diet book talking about this, though, okay?

So, it's not sexy, it's not marketable, and, but that's the truth. We need to watch our portion sizes and we, when we do treat ourselves, of course, we're going to treat ourselves, but don't let that make you go into like a slippery slope of you can't get yourself to stop eating, right? So, you know, it's all a fine line, and I think that's why diet is so confusing and it's overwhelming, and, you know, we can't fall for the marketing bulldo, we really just have to

Be eating responsibly, looking at our labels, watching our portion sizes, eating a little bit of everything, okay? And just reining it in and knowing when to stop. I will always say that.

We have to know when to stop. Don't choose a diet that tells you can have as much as you want of something. You're going to get sick of that something, by the way, I would think, even– even bacon, people.

Yeah, well, I think that's a good place to, close out today. So, if you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out the– the website, actually, kidneystonediet.com. Jill has the Kidney Stone Diet Prevention Course.

She has, one-on-one consultations. There's all sorts of free and, premium content over there. You never have to spend a dollar.

I mean, you can go get everything that you need from there. There's more episodes of the podcast. We have– we have a bunch going on, so I think we will wrap there, and be sure to, like, comment, and subscribe on this video if you're watching, or, subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening right now.

Yeah, everybody comment on YouTube because I love answering them, so do it, people.

Yeah, you're in there responding to everyone, yeah. You're– you're and you are everywhere. I mean, you have the Facebook group with thousands of people you're interacting with all the time.

We have YouTube, the podcast–

Instagram.

Yeah, Instagram, as well. Yeah, so I think we will call that a wrap for today. Thanks again, Jill.

Bye, Jeff, thank you so much.

See ya.