When you look at a nutritional label, you’ll see lots of information… which can be confusing if you haven’t educated yourself in the matter. If you’re looking to maximize your health, reduce inflammation, and go low-carb or keto, the two things you’ll want to pay closest attention to are the ingredients and the carbs. The ingredient list is probably one of the most confusing because it’s hard to know what healthy, what spikes your blood sugar, or even how to pronounce some of the things they put in food nowadays! The other thing is the amount of carbs and when you look at it, you’ll see total carbs, sugars and added sugars, net carbs, fiber, and possibly more. Here’s what you need to know: fiber is good; added sugars are bad. The body doesn’t break down fiber, so they are subtracted from the total carbs. So, if there are 10 grams of carbs total and 5 grams of fiber, the net carbs would be 5 – simple! Added sugars are bad because that means that they are putting additional sweeteners in the product, typically ones that are bad like high-fructose corn syrup or other such blood-sugar spiking additives. If you’re only looking to go low-carb, it’s a simple plan to keep your added sugars as low as possible and avoid large quantities of high-carb foods. If you’re trying to get into or stay in ketosis, it’s a little more complicated to determine what your net carb limit is as it varies from person to person, depending on factors like how active your job is, if you work out or not, amount of lean muscle tissue, etc. But as a general rule of thumb, keeping your total carbs under 50 grams and your net carbs between 20-35 grams per day, you should be ok but if your lifestyle is more sedentary, you’ll want to stay below these marks.