October 11, 2017
Many people don’t understand how important the information is on food labels. I never used to pay much attention either. Here are some tips to help you decipher this important nutrition information.
How to Read Food Labels
Check the serving size
This will tell you what all of the other information on the label is based on. You want to compare that to the amount you eat. It is very rare that the serving size is the entire container. There will usually be another line that will tell you how many servings are in the containers. I was blown away by this when I started paying attention.
Look at the calories
This will tell you how many calories are in one serving of the container. A calorie is a unit of energy that the body can generate from the food you ingest, They are essential for our health and the key is to ingest the right amount based on your current age, size and activity levels. Proteins, fats and carbohydrates are converted into glucose to use as fuel for your body.
Look at percent Daily Value
The scale is from 0-100% and can tell you how much of a nutrient is in one serving. If there is less than 5%, this would be considered a small amount but greater than 15% would be considered a lot. Daily values for carbohydrates, total far, saturated fat and trans fat are based on a 2000 calorie per day diet. Daily values for other nutrients on the label do not take into account caloric needs and apply to most people. You want to make sure you are getting adequate dietary fiber, protein, calcium, iron and vitamins and nutrients and limit saturated and trans fats that raise LDL cholesterol.
Check the ingredients list
The ingredients are listed in order by quantity on a nutrition label. If you are looking for or trying to avoid certain ingredients, this is the place to look. It is usually under the nutrition facts table on the packaging.
Always choose whole foods when possible over packaged foods. This makes reading the ingredient list easy as the whole food would be the ingredient.
