 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Welcome to another episode of Long Live La Familia, the nutrition soap opera that speaks not only to our hearts, but also to our appetites. I'm Carrie Bachman, and I'm your host for the series. If you've been with us before, you'll remember the Sierra family. This is the family that's featured in our series, two grandparents and their six adult children. Now today we're going to be focusing particularly on Santiago or Jim as he goes by. He's the youngest brother in the family, and he's raising a teenage son on his own because he's a widower. He's also a graduate student and he's working, so he's really busy and doesn't pay a lot of attention necessarily to healthy foods. The title of our episode today is Labels. Como tienen información? And what that means is labels, they have a lot of information on them, and that's really true. I hope that we can make some sense out of those labels as we go through the episode today. Now you remember that we always prepare a recipe and today is no different. What we're going to be making is a very sweet snack called Moonballs, and this is actually something that can be used as a substitute for some of these store-bought candy bars that you might have your kids clamoring for. So before we get started on our recipe, I want to of course wash my hands. This is always important before you prepare any food or eat any food. Food safety is a problem, especially for people who are already sick or young children or older adults. So it's real important that we be careful in the kitchen. Now if you've seen our shows before, you'll remember that each episode is divided into three different segments. And that gives us some time to get back together here to talk about what we've seen and to also relate it a little bit to our own lives. Now the dialogue you're going to be hearing is a little bit strange probably you're thinking. It's a mixture of Spanish and English altogether. Don't worry if you don't speak Spanish though. You'll be able to understand everything that you need to. Let's go ahead and get started with our recipe. Now the first ingredient in our Moonballs that we're going to add is non-fat dry milk. This is just basically liquid milk that has had the liquid water part of it removed. So it's kind of concentrated and it's in a handy form so that if you're camping or on vacation or without refrigeration you can use milk and you don't have to worry about food safety issues. Okay that's about one cup and another cup here. Now what do you think powdered milk might have in terms of nutrients? Let's take a look at the label since we're talking about labels today. This label is nice and large so it's a good example. The United States government has mandated that all labels look alike now. They all follow the same format. Before it used to be a lot harder to read and compare labels. They all say nutrition facts at the top and then right under there it says what the serving size is for this product. That's really important because if I decide to use one cup of this dry milk then what I need to do is look at the serving size which is actually a third of a cup and multiply nutrient values by three. One third times three equals one cup. It's very important that you look at that serving size. So what do you think this milk is gonna have that's good for us? Well if you look quickly down the label down here this is a giveaway, calcium it says 30%. Now what is 30% of what exactly? Well it's 30% of the daily value that the government has determined the average person needs of calcium. So basically you're not being told here how much calcium is contained in here by weight but how much it is in terms of the percent that you need in your day-to-day life. That's a little bit different for these nutrients that are listed up here above where we actually have the amounts the weights of them listed in grams or in milligrams. You may wonder what exactly is a gram? Well a gram if you think about it is just a very small measurement of weight. We're used to measuring weight in pounds for example. A gram is much much smaller, in fact it's about the weight of a paperclip. So you can imagine if this has, let's see here, eight grams of protein it's got about eight paperclips weight worth of protein in this milk. Okay we're gonna look at more labels later, I know there are a lot more questions but that's at least a start for our labels. Let's go ahead now and take a quick look at our first segment of the episode. Dad how long do we have to wait here? No se dijo que tanto tenemos que esperarnos porque tengo que hablar con la Dean. Voy a presentar este papel en la coherencia el fin del mes. A ver que dice la secretary, she probably knows how long we have to wait. Excuse me, oh, when can my dad see the Dean? In about 15 minutes. She just had to review some reports with one of the advisors. Thank you. Dijo que tenemos que esperarnos como 15 minutos. Pero 15 minutos para ustedes es como una media hora. Dango hombre, can I go get a candy or soda from the snack machines? Excuse me, Mr. Sierra, do you mind if I practice my Spanish with you? I have a class tonight and I overheard you speaking with your son. Sure, go ahead. Gusta una taza de café? Si por favor. And if your son wants a snack, Mary in the next office is selling some candy for her daughter's school. Vana Chihuahua a presentar un concierto en la universidad. ¿Puedo ir a comprar un dulce, papá? Si, como no, hijo. Las podemos ayudar con su fundraiser, especialmente porque tu mamá fue a esa escuela en Chihuahua. ¿Tienes dinero? Si, papá. Where do I get the candy? Ah, yeah. En ese cuarto tiene los dulces. Thanks. Buen, hijo, tiene usted. Gracias. You and your wife should be very proud of him. Well, my wife died three years ago. Pero mi familia me ayuda con él. We're a very close family. Que lastima, que se murió. You know, your paper for the conference was very interesting. The dean was very impressed with it. ¿A su cara o crema? A black. I can help myself. I become more of a coffee drinker now that I've been writing my dissertation. Eso pasa con los grad students. I just bought some decap. Hopefully that's a little bit healthier. You know, su hijo habla espanol muy bien. Gracias. It was his first language since my wife was Mexican. It's important that he knows his heritage. ¿Cómo está su café? Muy sabrosa. I bought something for all of us. Undulce para ti, cookies para usted. Undulce para mí, and also a soda for me. Perfecto. It's my snack time. Gracias. It's nice of you to think of me. Pero yo traigo mi snack de la casa. ¿Cómo comida nutritiva? Porque no quiero ganar peso. Déjame ver qué dice la etiqueta. You actually read those labels? Todo el tiempo. I learned about them at school, but I didn't think anybody really paid attention to them. I never read the labels. What good do they do anyway? Oh, las etiquetas tienen mucho información. But I just usually look at the fat content. You're not fat. Gracias. No estoy gorda porque busco en la etiqueta las gramas de grasa. Fat grams? That's on there? Let me see. I never look at these labels. Nutrition facts. There's a lot of information here. Serving size, vitamin C, calcium, percentage DV. Who needs to know all this stuff anyway? ¿Cómo tienen información? Te apuesto que la mayoría del público no las leye. Welcome back. The characters are a bit confused about what to look for on labels, weren't they? Well, let's take a specific example, and maybe we can clarify a little bit. Let's say you want to go to the grocery store and buy some sandwich bread. And you come across these two types. Both of them are from the same company. One of them is called a 12 grain bread, and that sounds pretty healthy. The other one is called a light 100% whole wheat bread. And you think that also sounds healthy. So how are you going to compare them? Well, we need to look at the labels. So let's look first at the 12 grain bread label. One serving is a slice that has 120 calories and one gram of fiber. And we want to focus on fiber with breads because American diets are very low in fiber, generally. And breads can be a good source of it. So that's not a very good source of fiber, one gram. It's a little bit of a surprise, isn't it? Let's look, on the other hand, at this bread, the 100% whole wheat. The serving size here is different. It's two slices, and they're only 80 calories. Wow, that's kind of strange, isn't it? Two slices with fewer calories than one slice of this bread. Two slices of this bread contain seven grams of fiber. Wow, that's almost 30% of what you need to eat in one day. So this is a very good source of fiber. Now, why the difference? Well, look at the shape of the loaf. This loaf is a lot bigger. This is a lot thinner. So a slice of this is going to weigh more than a slice of this light bread. Now, if you're trying to cut back on calories and lose a little weight, this is probably a good choice here, this light bread. And all that information came straight off the labels. That's something you can look at yourselves when you go to the grocery store. The other thing that's interesting about labels is a lot of them nowadays are in both English and in Spanish. And this is an example that I took off of a can of beans. And you can see that all the information appears side by side in English and Spanish. So it's really pretty helpful. Let's go ahead and go back to our recipe now. We've got our powdered milk measured in here. And I just realized that I measured in two cups of powdered milk. And actually, I only was supposed to measure in one. Let's go ahead and take out a cup of this milk. You know, the bowl is looking a little bit too small. I'll go ahead and measure back out a cup. This is pretty realistic, isn't it? This happens sometimes at home if you're cooking and get a little distracted. You always want to look back at that recipe and make sure you're using the same amount. OK, so what we really want here is one cup of powdered milk. Now what we're going to do is go ahead and add two more ingredients. First one is honey. I've already poured some of it into here. This is actually a New Mexico honey that I bought at a co-op. That's why it's in an unmarked container. And this specific type of honey is called wildflower honey. Now the other honey that I've got sitting here on the table is another flavor, and it's mesquite honey. When I say flavor, actually honey gets its flavor from the flowers that the bee visits. And so the bees for this honey visited a variety of wildflowers, while those making the mesquite honey got pollen from mesquite. And the honeys will have different flavors. So it's really kind of fun to explore your local honeys. And as I say, a co-op can be a great place to buy them. OK, so we have half a cup of honey here. And next, we're going to take the same cup, measuring cup. Go ahead and measure in half a cup of peanut butter. Now, even though honey is sticky, peanut butter is even stickier. And believe it or not, the fact that the honey is already in the cup is going to help this come out of here a little bit better. You know I love peanut butter. We've used it in several of our recipes. This time, I chose a peanut butter that's actually made from New Mexico peanuts, the Valencia peanuts, those that have the red skins. And it's really a tasty, delicious peanut butter. Doesn't have added sugars. And you can read the label. Peanut butter is very popular food among children. The thing is, it's high in calories. And that's because it's very high in fat. As you know, fat is something we need to watch in our diets a little bit. But the fat in peanut butter is pretty much healthy fat. So we do need some fat in our diets. And because peanut butter tastes so good and provides a good source of protein, it's not a bad food to actually have in our diets. All right, so we've got our three of our ingredients in here now. We're going to go ahead and go back to the episode. Take a look at where Santiago is with his label reading. Ni tenemos tiempo de cocinar como puedo leer todas las etiquetas. If we started reading all the labels, we'd never get anything ready for dinner. Do you cook? Oh, yes. I try to eat pretty healthy things. I bring different snacks for my break time or if I have to work late, let me show you. Today I brought some yogurt and some carrots. Híjole, como tiene snacks aquí? Google, diet soda, muffins, cookies, popcorn, fruta. Do you pack a lunch for your kids? No. No tengo hijos. Me and my dad take turns making our lunches. We buy those packaged meals a lot, más fácil. But we always try to make something for dinner. Or we go to eat at my sister's house from his father's. Sounds like you have a close family. Sí, somos una familia unida. We're going to a family reunion next month. Oh, una fiesta de familia. You know, you really should try making your own lunches. Esa comida que viene preparada tiene mucha grasa y cuesta mucho. Yes, but the packaged food saves time. A veces no tenemos tiempo en la mañana a hacer los lunches. What is your name? You help me out all the time y no sé tu nombre. Margaret. Margaret. That's nice. I'm Santiago, and this is my san pide. Oh, let me get that phone. Soda and candy. When you mix those two things, that's like drinking salsa water with your food. It's no worse than chips and salsa and all the tons of coffee you drink every night. She's really nice to me when I come to see the dean. Leó mi papel y le gustó. Did you notice she didn't have a wedding ring? Ay, hijo, ¿qué me estás buscando en la novia? No, papá, pero todo el tiempo estás conmigo or con grandma y grandpa, a tía lisa. Tienes que get a life. Eat your candy. Deja ver los dos labels. Protein. Well, that's good for you. Protein and candy? El mío tiene tres gramos de proteina. Mine has five grams of protein. Fidel, try some yogurt. You know, I just compared my low-fat cookies with the ones you bought me. Those low-fat cookies, 10 and 0 grams of fat. These have 4.5 grams of fat. Ay, 4.5 gramos de grasa. Can I see those labels? Sure. Look, the serving sizes are different. Mira, those low-fat cookies tienen casi el mismo número de calorías que los regular cookies. What? I never noticed that. Déjame ver. How complicated. Es más fácil comer fruta o verdura. Yeah, la manzana no necesita un label. That's true. Fruits and vegetables don't need labels. I can't compare a cookie to an apple, but I think I'd rather have these regular tasting cookies than these cardboard-tasting ones. The confusion continues, doesn't it? Labels are not an easy thing to read. So let's look at a couple more examples. The first one I've got here for us today is velvita. This is something a lot of us use to make nachos or cheese sauces, enchiladas. And it's not necessarily the healthiest food, but since we do use it, we want to make sure that we're choosing a healthy version of it. On the bottom here, we have velvita light. And on the top, we have the regular velvita. Now, what's the difference? Let's go ahead and take a look at the labels. The serving size is the same for each, a quarter-inch slice. Calorie-wise, the light has 20 calories fewer, 60 compared to 80, so it's not that different in calories. You might think that's not enough to make you choose the light one. But now let's take a look at the fat, and particularly the saturated fat. That's one of the types of fat that is the most dangerous to our health. The regular velvita has four grams of saturated fat per serving, while the reduced fat velvita has only two grams. So you are getting actually half the saturated fat in this reduced fat product, and that makes it a good choice. Assuming, of course, that it tastes good and performs well in your recipes. Now, let's look at another example, and this is where things can really get complicated. I've just chosen four yogurts here that I found today at the grocery store. They all happen to be yo-play, but you can do this with any type of yogurt. And you see we've got four types here. We've got custard-style, which is a fairly heavy form of yogurt. The original, which is what we're used to. Whips, which says it's a light and fluffy type of yogurt, and then this is the light version, meaning that it's got an artificial sweetener. Well, we might expect that this light version would have the fewest number of calories, and that's true. What's a surprise, however, is how many calories this whipped version has. 140 per container, and that compares to 170 in this container and 190 of the custard-style. Well, you think, well, actually it does have fewer calories, so what's the surprise? We need to look at the serving size. For all three of these yogurts right here, the serving size is one container or six ounces. Now, this container looks exactly the same, but actually because the yogurt is a lighter texture, it doesn't weigh as much. There are only four ounces in this yogurt. So there are a lot more calories for those four ounces than there are in the other yogurts. It's really kind of an interesting thing to compare. Now, the other thing that gets complicated is, look, here's another type of yogurt. This is a larger container, it's eight ounces, and yet the serving size is one container. So here you're comparing four ounces to six ounces to eight ounces. It pays to read the labels. Let's put these to the side now, and we're gonna go ahead and finish up our recipe. We've got our powdered milk, our honey, and our peanut butter. What we're missing are the oats. We're gonna add half a cup of those, and I like to use the real heavy steel cut oats. The reason being is they add a lot of texture. You can use quick oats if you'd like, and again, they're not supposed to be cooked. So just half a cup of those, and finally, we're gonna add a few raisins here. I'm not gonna measure these exactly, but raisins add a little bit of color and interest to our recipe. Oh, probably about a quarter cup here. Now comes the fun part, getting these to mix up together. We're gonna go ahead and start mixing with our spatula, and that works pretty well for a while, but you'll see in a second that it starts getting a little bit sticky. Now this is where the kids really like to have fun with this recipe. It's a great recipe for them because there's no cooking involved. The ingredients are messy, which makes it fun. I know it's kind of a pain for adults, but think about how much fun kids have cooking. If they do when they're young, they're gonna enjoy cooking later on, too. So you can see this is starting to kind of come together into more of a solid mixture. And while we're watching the rest of our episode, I'll mix these up and you'll see what they look like at the very end. Margaret, that's cool that you read the labels and bring all that healthy stuff to work. You should listen to your own advice for you then. Hi, Papa. You also have to eat more healthier. Can I see your candy bar? Sure. Candy bar, yogurt. This stuff isn't too bad. I suppose one candy bar, de vez en cuando, doesn't hurt. Pero kids at school come in dulces para lunche cada día. They spend two or three dollars a day on junk food. Tres dólares en dulces cada día? Tendrán mucho dinero a esos estudiantes que compran dulces cada día. Yo no puedo hacer eso. All this talk about food reminds me of how hungry I am. Let's go eat at El Gordo's café for dinner and we can relax. I don't have any homework. ¿Quieres ir a comer con nosotros, Margaret? It's nice of you to include me, but can I take a rain check? Tengo mi clase de español esta noche. Oh, the dean is ready to see you now. We've hardly had enough time for you to eat your snack. ¿Qué le hace? La visita era más importante que comer. Come on, son. Let's see if you learn anything about international business. Papa, invitara a la Margaret que venga a comer con nosotros los sábados. Matchmaker. Gracias. Por la lesión y la nutrición. No, no, thank you. You taught me something new. Ahora voy a leer las etiquetas del tiempo. Tal vez podemos ir a comer juntos. We'll bring the dessert. Lo fat and bananas. Well, that's the end of our episode. Let's take a little bit of time and look at a few more labels on products. You heard Santiago mention that they like to take processed packaged foods for their lunches. And these lunchables are really popular. They now come actually in a mega size, which is even bigger than their regular size here. What do we think about these choices? Well, let's look at the labels and see. The regular size, and this is a turkey bagel. Lunch, and this is one of their healthier lunches, contains 410 calories and 15% of the fat that you should get in a day. So it's not horribly great, but it's not actually as bad as it might be. Now the mega lunch, on the other hand, has 800 calories, almost twice as many, and it has 58% of the fat that you recommended to eat in one day. That's just in this one tiny box of food. So the labels can really help us sort out a difference. If you're gonna choose a lunchables, go with something like this and choose it every once in a while. Most of the time, it's better to make your own sandwich and take your own fruit with your lunch. Now, our final comparison. This is what the moonballs look like when they're finally mixed up. And what you do once they get to this stage is go ahead and just put your hands in them. Of course, your hands are clean because we've washed them and roll them into balls just like this. Now, you can see I've got a plate here in front of me with some oats on it. And we're gonna go ahead and roll the balls in the oats. And it makes for a really nice looking candy. And it also keeps them from sticking together too much. Once you make these, you wanna put them in the fridge. You can keep them for about three weeks in the refrigerator. So you just roll them up like this. All right, so that's three. Here we have four of them. Now, how are we gonna compare these to candy bars? Well, I've done the nutritional analysis. Here are four moonballs on this plate here. This number of moonballs has 200 calories. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Well, it's pretty sweet and it's got some peanut butter in it and it's pretty caloric. Now, if you compare to these candy bars, this candy bar has about 200 calories. So does this one. Actually, they all do, one serving of them anyway. So that's about the same amount of calories as you would get in one of these candy bars. Now, the difference is the nutrition is actually a lot better. The moonballs are much lower in fat and they're a lot higher in calcium. In fact, 12% of what you should eat in a day is contained in just four moonballs. Now, another thing to be careful of with these candy bars, there's always some surprises lurking on the labels. This O'Henry bar actually has two little bars inside of it. They call this a two serving package. I'm not sure anyone I know would ever open this up and eat just one of these. And then you've got the king-size candy, like this one. And actually, this is a huge amount of candy to eat in one sitting, and yet it's called one serving because most people would eat the whole thing. So you gotta be careful. I hope that you've learned a little bit about labels today that you can apply to your own lives. And until our next episode, long live all of our families. The preceding was a production of New Mexico State University. The views and opinions in this program are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of the NMSU Board of Regents.