What to Look for on a Nutrition Label

Eating nutritious, well-balanced meals is important because the food you eat is your body’s fuel. Giving your body what it needs can keep you healthy, help you achieve or maintain your target weight, improve your physical and mental performance, and improve your mood. But eating well can be very challenging. There are many factors that can get in the way – cost, time available for meal preparation, food allergies and preferences, daily schedule – but one factor that prevents many people from eating as well as they’d like is a lack of awareness of how to use a food item’s nutrition label and ingredients list to help make informed decisions.

Interpreting nutrition labels and ingredients lists can be intimidating, but it is incredibly helpful when comparing similar foods or identifying the nutritional value of your current diet.

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What's on a Nutrition Facts Panel?

Servings

The first thing you should look at when examining a food item’s nutrition label is the serving size section. This is the first section of a nutrition label and it contains not only the size of one serving, but how many servings are contained in a package of the product. The servings are presented in units that are familiar and easy to understand, like cups or pieces, but most of us are pretty bad at estimating how much we’re actually eating. This is where the listing of total servings per package can come in handy – if the box says there are 10 servings and you typically go through the box in 5 days, you consume 2 servings per day. Figuring out how many servings you typically eat allows you to better understand and apply the rest of the information on the Nutrition Facts panel.

Calories

Following the serving size section, the label lists the total number of Calories and Calories from fat in each serving. Calories sometimes get a bad rap, but they are essential for bodily functioning. Calories are energy – without enough of them, your body will break down. Generally speaking, 40-60 Calories is low, 100-140 Calories is moderate, and 400 Calories or more is high. When you’re looking at the number of Calories in one serving of a given food item, it’s important to keep in mind not only how many servings you’ll eat but what else you will eat with that food item.

Limit Intake of (Most of) These

The next few lines on the nutrition label list the fat content, cholesterol, and sodium. Most Americans consume too much of these nutrients.

Saturated fat and trans fat (among others) are broken down within the Total Fat listing because studies have shown that it’s not just the amount of fat consumed, but the type that increases risk of certain diseases (including heart disease) and these are the two most concerning types of fat. Dietary experts recommend restricting daily intake of saturated and trans fats as much as possible.

Lately, studies have cast doubt on the belief that higher amounts of cholesterol in the diet are related to higher levels of cholesterol in the blood (the type of cholesterol that can clog your blood vessels and lead to strokes or heart attacks). It appears that genetics plays a much larger role in blood cholesterol levels than previously thought, so we may not need to avoid dietary cholesterol as much as was formerly recommended. This is good news for people who like eggs, a nutrient-rich food. The only knock on eggs from a dietary standpoint has been their relatively high level of cholesterol.

Current sodium recommendations are to consume 1500-2300 mg per day, meaning that if you eat 3 meals a day, each meal should have only 500-765 mg of sodium. Depending on what you typically consume (processed foods, take-out/fast food), this may be a difficult restriction to meet. However, working to lower the amount of sodium in your diet is well worth it - high sodium levels have long been linked to hypertension (high blood pressure).

Get Enough of These

Most Americans don’t get enough necessary nutrients. Those we’re most commonly deficient in – fiber, Vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron – are always mentioned on the Nutrition Facts label because the FDA mandates it. Other vitamins and minerals contained in the food will also be printed on the label following the required listings. We need these nutrients to help our bodies run efficiently and effectively.

It’s recommended that adults consume 25-35 grams of dietary fiber each day. While the two types of fiber – soluble and insoluble – are not specifically identified on many Nutrition Facts labels, you need to consume each type daily for proper bowel functioning and to lower your risk of heart disease.

The vitamins and minerals listed at the bottom of the food’s Nutrition Facts label are identified in percent daily value, instead of through a weight- or volume-based measurement. The percent daily value is a scale ranging from 0%-100% and indicates what percentage of the recommended amount of a given nutrient you should consume in one day if you are consuming 2,000 Calories per day. Using these values to figure out how much of a given nutrient you have consumed is not an exact science, but it does help you identify foods that are high in a given nutrient. Generally speaking, 5% or less is low and 20% or higher is high. These guidelines are consistent for all nutrients, not just for those listed at the end of the nutrition label. You do not need to calculate your total Caloric intake and then re-calculate all of the percent daily values. Simply use the printed percent daily value numbers as a guide.

For Your Information

Some items on a food’s nutrition label are for your information to help you make a more informed decision about choosing foods appropriate for your needs and goals. These items include total carbohydrate, sugars, and protein.

Carbohydrates and sugars (a type of carbohydrate) are often thought of very negatively, but they power your body’s metabolism. You need carbs to live and you definitely need them to perform. If you consume high-carb foods, try to select those that also offer high levels of other needed nutrients as well (fiber, vitamins and minerals, etc.).

Protein needs vary based on age, sex, and amount and intensity of physical activity. Getting enough protein is important for muscle growth and healing. Generally speaking, young athletic females need 18-24 grams every 3-4 hours per day, while young athletic males need 20-30 grams every 3-4 hours per day (you should be eating protein 4-6 times per day, depending on how long your day is).

Below (or Next to) the Nutrition Facts Panel: The Ingredients List

Immediately following or adjacent to the Nutrition Facts panel is another required piece of information: the ingredients list. This can be a real eye-opener on some foods, if you know what you’re looking for. The ingredients list is required to list all ingredients (above trace amounts) that are found in a food item in descending order of weight (the heaviest/most prevalent ingredient is listed first). This is where you can separate the contenders from the pretenders when it comes to healthy food items. “Whole wheat” or “whole grain” on an ingredients list is much healthier for you than “enriched bleached white flour.”

Additionally, the ingredients list literally tells you what you’re paying for. When you start reading food labels, you’ll be amazed how many items you thought were quality food products have water as a first ingredient, contain enriched or bleached ingredients, or list several kinds of syrups and artificial flavors and colors. The first several ingredients are the most important to evaluate, as these are the most prevalent in the food item. The ingredients list is also essential if you have food allergies or are living with or cooking for someone who does (in this case, be sure to scour the entire list as well as any food allergy warnings).

The Big Picture

When you’re reading nutrition labels, it is easy to start using tunnel vision, only focusing on the single food item you’re evaluating. Remember that the food you’re examining at that time is only one component of your dietary intake for that day. If one food item is very high in fats or sodium, your other food items need to be low in these nutrients to keep you from consuming too much of them, which is bad for your health.