Nutrition labels exist to make it easier for us to understand what we are putting in our bodies.  However, despite the fact that nutrition labels are required by law to appear on all packaged foods and follow a set format, there’s still a lot of confusion surrounding how to interpret this information. Most people in the United States have received either no information or inaccurate information about how to actually read the nutrition label. 

This is great for the food industry.  Many food companies prefer that you don’t look at the nutrition label at all.  Instead, they would prefer you to get all your information from the marketing messages on the front of the product.  That’s because, in the United States, the laws regarding food marketing have a lot of loopholes that allow companies to market foods misleadingly.  Unfortunately, this leads to a situation where many well-meaning people attempting to improve their health will end up purchasing what I might call “fake healthy foods”.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t advocate forbidding any specific foods.  The point of this article is not to fear monger you into never eating a cookie again.  But I do want to empower you to know the nutritional value of your foods so that you can make informed decisions of when and how often to eat something.  If you are going to eat high sugar and high fat foods, I want you to get it from something you actually enjoy–not from some fake healthy food you didn’t know even had those things in them.

So let’s jump right into it. We’ll begin with some good news: at the time of this writing, all nutrition labels on US foods should follow the same format.  In 2016, a law was passed requiring food labels to transition to a new and improved design.  Food companies were given several years to make this change, including many extensions. This resulted in several years where there were two different nutrition labels, which was a confusing time in the history of our nation.  Thankfully, today, the old label should be completely phased out.  This means we will only have to break down how to read one type of label (because one is more than enough).  

Check out this visual of the label, which highlights how the this label if different from the old one, courtesy of the FDA website:

We will be breaking down every section of this nutrition label, with tons of examples. By the time you are done reading this article, you will be on track to becoming a nutrition facts label reading MASTER.

Serving Size: The serving size simply tells you for what serving the nutrition information on the label applies to.  For example, if the serving size is 1/2 cup of rice, the calorie and other nutrition information on the label is for no more or no less than exactly 1/2 cup of rice. If you eat more or less than 1/2 cup of rice, the amount that you are taking will differ from what’s on the nutrition label.  Knowing this can help you avoid making a mistake of assuming that what is a normal serving size for you is going to be the same as the serving size on the label. This is often not true. Knowing this can help you be more conscious of your portion sizes.  This can also help you be aware of attempts to present misleading information by putting unrealistic serving sizes.  Using unrealistic and uncommon serving sizes is a common loophole that is exploited by the food industry.  

Let’s use my favorite candy bar as an example: the Hershey’s cookies and cream bar. 

In this picture, you will see something that seems too good to be true.  130 calories, it says.  Only 130 calories!!  Who knew that an entire king-sized Hersey’s cookies and cream bar is only 130 calories?!  Well, let’s look at the back nutrition label:

While the front label puts the part about the serving size being 1/3 of pack in fine print, the back label makes it harder to miss. It even lists what the whole bar will give you: 370 calories. Nice try, Hershey! If I eat a 370 calorie candy bar, at least I’m going to know I’m doing it!

Percent Daily Value: The percent daily values can help give you an idea of whether a food is high or low in something. It is based on the amount recommended of each nutrient in a 2000 calorie diet. For example, in the candy bar above, the whole bar would give you 60% of your saturated fat for whole day. In general 5% of less or the daily value is low in that nutrient and 20% or more is high for that nutrient. Knowing this can help you make a more accurate judgement of where a food stands nutritionally.

Calories per Serving: This tells you how many calories you get for the servings, just like how in the last example, you got 130 calories for the serving size of 1/3 the candy bar. A calorie is simply a unit of energy. Everyone uses a certain amount of calories each day to fuel their bodies. The amount of calories you use will depend on a variety of factors including your metabolism, how much you exercise, your height and weight, your age, and so on.  How many calories you use vs how many calories you consume will determine your weight. If you want to gain, consume more calories, and if you want to lose, consume less calories. 

Total Fat: This tells you how much fat is in the serving, regardless of the type of fat. Fat is a necessary part of all diets, but how much is right for you depends of your goals. Fat is dense in calories. Every grams of it has 9 calories which over double what a gram of protein or carbohydrate has. This means that more fat might be a good thing to someone looking to gain weight and moderating fat intake may be useful for someone trying to lose. The total fat is most useful for figuring out how lean a protein source is. A lean protein is a protein that is lower in fat. Since protein helps you feel full and preserves muscle during weight loss, adequate protein is usually a priority for those trying to lose weight. But protein sources that are high in fat work against weight loss because they can quickly add a lot of calories. For example, a serving of pork sausage might have 20 grams of protein but also 350 calories, while a serving of chicken breast with the same protein content only has 105 calories. So how do you look at a nutrition label and determine if the protein is lean? I do it by comparing the Total Fat and the Protein. Specifically, I find that a good rule of thumb is that if the protein is at least double the grams of fat, then it is a relatively lean protein. Let’s look at some examples to show what I mean.

First, let’s revisit that pork sausage:

How does it look? Well, the total fat is 20 grams and the protein is 11 grams. We said that a lean protein should have about twice as protein compared to fat. This is the other way around. Based on this information, I would conclude that pork sausage is a high-fat protein source.

Now, let’s try to find an alternative. And you actually don’t need to look far. Chicken sausage is a popular alternative that comes in many different flavors and is easy to find at almost any grocery store. Let’s take a look at the label to this Garlic Parmesan Chicken Sausage from the brand Counter, found at Walmart:

Now, we see that there is 14 grams of protein and 3.5 grams of fat. The protein is more than double the grams of fat, making it a lean protein. Knowing how to read the label in this case could help you make a simple swap with a big impact. Cabbage and Kielbasa night just got a lot healthier because of your label reading skills!

Saturated Fats: The total fat may tell you whether a protein is lean and whether a food is more dense in calories, but you should also be aware that not all fats are created equal. The biggest type of fat that you need to be cautious of is saturated fats, which is found directly under the Total Fats. Saturated fats, which are high in foods such as butter, heavy cream, and red meats, are known to contribute to high cholesterol levels which can worsen your heart health. Using our pork sausage as an example, that label tells us that 1 link has 7 grams of saturated fat. But is 7 grams a lot or not? We can refer to the percent daily values to give us an idea. We can see that this is 35% of the percentage daily value. Again, anything over 20% is high. Compare this to the chicken sausage that has instead 1.5 grams of saturated fat which is 8% of the daily value. This reflects that the chicken sausage has less saturated fat and will therefore be less hard on your heart health.

Trans Fats: This type of fat is also not the best for your heart. The good news about it, though, is that it less common than it once was. This was not always the case. Trans fats mainly came from something called “partially hydrogenated oils”. This was an artificial food made by turning a liquid fat oil into a solid fat like butter. Trans fats were intended to provide the best of both worlds with all the same taste and texture saturated fats but without all the negatives effects on heart health. For this reason, at one point, it was widespread in all kinds of sweets and snack foods across the United States. Unfortunately, trans fats didn’t turn out to be the ace in the hole the food industry hoped for. Research eventually revealed trans fats to be even worse than saturated fats for heart health, not better. For this reason, the FDA banned partially hydrogenated oils in 2015 and by 2021 it was completely phased out of the food supply. Why, then, are trans fats still on the label? Well, partially hydrogenated oils are technically not the only possible source of trans fats. Frying foods can also create trans fats, especially when reusing the same oil over and over such as in a fast food restaurant. Very small amounts also naturally occur in some meat and dairy foods. That being said, because of how strong the backlash was against trans fats, as of now, it is honestly quite difficult to find a product that has a significant amount of trans fats. I couldn’t even find a current product to put in this article as an example. Even the label for McDonald’s fries and Dunkin’ Donuts claim to have 0 trans fats.

Cholesterol: You would think that this one would be obvious. If the goal is keep your cholesterol levels under control, you would think that cutting out foods with cholesterol would be the answer. I once had a patient that did just that. She carefully looked at labels and avoided anything with any amount of cholesterol. However, to her surprise and frustration, the next time she got bloodwork, her cholesterol was actually higher than it was before. Why? Well, it turns out that saturated fats and added sugars actually have a huge impact on cholesterol levels as well. When talking to her, I found just that. While she had cut out cholesterol, she was still eating sources of saturated fats and added sugars. Moreover, she wasn’t eat much fiber, which is known to help bind cholesterol in your body. (This means you poop it out instead of absorbing it in your bloodstream.) I generally don’t recommend to use cholesterol as a deciding factor as to whether to choose food. I tend to find that this leads to cutting out nutrient dense foods like eggs and shrimp when it usually isn’t necessary. I find that for the vast majority of people, strategies such as limiting saturated fats and added sugars, increasing fiber intake from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and consuming plant sterols will be more effective for helping cholesterol levels than trying to cut out cholesterol itself.

Sodium: Most people know the goal is usually to avoid eating too much sodium, but there is a lot of confusion when it comes to defining what is too much. Over the course of my career, I have seen many people look at a nutrition label with an amount such as 50 mg of sodium and remark that this is full of salt. But 50 mg is very low relative to what is considered high. The WHO recommends healthy adults limit sodium to less than 2000 mg a day, while 1500 mg or less is the usual recommendation for someone with heart disease. These are NOT the easiest numbers to work with. When is the last time you counted the number of milligrams of sodium you were getting during the day? This is why, with sodium, I usually recommend simply looking at the percent daily values. Let’s apply that to the example below, which shows the nutrition label for David’s Sunflower Seeds.

This label will tell you that the humble sunflower seed itself has only 65 mg of sodium per 1/4 cup serving. This is 3% of the daily value, which should tell you that 65 mg of sodium isn’t anything to stress about. On the other hand, if you are sucking on the salty shells of said sunflower seeds (and who doesn’t?), then you will get a whopping 2820 mg of sodium which is 123% of the daily value. Needless to say, if you have high blood pressure or heart disease, salted sunflower seeds are not a great heart healthy snack idea. Even for someone without these risk factors, I would recommend limiting this to occasional just because of how high the sodium content is.

Total Carbohydrates: This section tells you the total amount of carbohydrates in the serving. This includes everything from complex carbohydrates to fiber, to sugars. 1 serving of a carbohydrate food is considered 15 grams of carbohydrates. It follows, then, that you can figure out how many carbohydrates servings are in a food by dividing by 15. For example, if there are 30 grams of Total Carbohydrates, then there are 2 carbohydrate servings. Carbohydrate recommendations can vary widely from person to person. A healthy adult might consume anywhere from 2-6 serves of carbohydrates in a meal and 1-2 carbohydrate servings per snack depending on a variety of factors. Carbohydrate intake may be less with weight loss interventions such as GLP-1s and bariatric surgery. A Registered Dietitian can help you figure out a carbohydrate goal that makes sense for you if you are in doubt (yes, a shameless plug).

Fiber: Fiber is a subcategory of Total Carbohydrates. It tells you how many of the Total Carbohydrates come specifically from fiber. Fiber is a little different from other forms of carbohydrates. All other carbohydrates give you energy and will influence your caloric intake and blood sugar levels. Not fiber. For this reason, fiber has unique health benefits. It helps you feel full even if you are eating less calories, helps prevent constipation by adding bulk to your stool, and helps feed the good bacteria in your gut. By looking at the fiber content, you can get something called Net Carbohydrates. Net Carbohydrates are taken by subtracting fiber from Total Carbohydrates. In some products, the difference between total carbohydrates and net carbohydrates can be significant. Let’s look at the example below to illustrate what I mean.

In the example above, we can see that the low carb tortilla has 19 grams of carbohydrates and 15 grams of fiber. If we subtract 15 from 19, we get 4. Therefore, each carb balance tortillas has only 4 net carbohydrates. This is a big difference. Not only are you getting a high amount of fiber (54% of the daily value), but you are only getting a fraction of a serving of carbohydrates.

Total Sugars: “Total Sugars”, which is sometimes also shortened to “Sugars” is another subcategory of Total Carbohydrates. It tells you how many of the Total Carbohydrates are from sugar. This includes all different types of sugars–both natural sugars and added sugars. Natural sugars are sugars that exist naturally in the food. Examples include lactose in dairy products and natural sugars in fruits. On the other hand, added sugars encompass any form of concentrated sugar that was added to the food. For example, white sugar added to brownies would be an added sugar, something we will discuss in more detail next.

Added Sugar: This is a subcategory under Total Sugars. In other words, it tells you how many of the Total Sugars are from Added Sugars. When you think of added sugar, you probably think of good ole’ white grainy stuff–white table sugar. Added sugars can encompass much more, though. Other common sources of added sugars include things like honey, maple syrup, corn syrup, agave syrup, and so on.

Again, let’s use an example to drive home this point. We will use a jello fruit cup as an example:

We can see that a cup of diced peaches has 24 grams of Total Carbohydrates, 1 gram of Fiber, 22 grams of Sugars (Total Sugars), and 20 grams of Added Sugars. This means that of the 24 grams of carbs in the cup, 1 is from fiber and 22 are from sugar. This adds up to 23. By default, the other gram must come from a starch (Starch does not have its own category, but you can assume anything not accounted for by fiber and sugar is a probably a starch). Of the 22 grams of sugar, 20 grams are from added sugars. That means by default that the other 2 grams are from natural sugars. Practically, from all of this, we can conclude that a jello fruit cup is mostly sugar, and the vast majority of that sugar is coming from the jello, with very little of the calories coming from the natural sugar in the actual peaches. This is valuable information. On first glance, you might think this is at least somewhat healthy a snack. Sure, you’re getting jello, but aren’t you getting some nutritious fruit in there too? The nutrition labels shows that the answer is: Not really. You are mostly just eating sugary jello. And I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to eat 20 grams of added sugar, I’d rather just go ahead and eat a Nerd Rope. (And yes, a Nerd rope does have the exact same amount of sugar as this. If you don’t believe me, I will hyperlink the Amazon link here, where you can see the label for youself!).

Protein: Finally, the last macronutrient you will find is our good friend, Protein. You will notice there is no Percent Daily Value here. That is because there is simply too much variation from person to person as to how much protein is needed. How much protein is right for you will depend upon your height, weight, age, sex, physical activity, health history, and so on and so forth. Higher protein intake is often a focus for those trying to lose weight because protein helps you feel fuller. This makes it easier to eat less calories to facilitate weight loss without feeling hungry all the time. 1 ounce of most protein foods have about 7 grams of protein. But how do you know how many ounces of a protein foods you are taking in? Well, 3 ounces is about the size of a deck of cards. Thus, if you are eating a piece of chicken about the size of a deck of cards, then you are eating about 21 grams of protein, because 3 multiplied by 7 is 21. 20-30 grams of protein per meal is a good starting point for a high protein diet, but, again, this is highly individual. As a dietitian, I am often helping people find the right goals for how much protein to eat.

Micronutrient content: At the very bottom of the label, you will notice a little section dedicated to micronutrients (micronutrient = fancy term for vitamins and minerals). The FDA requires 4 micronutrients specifically: Vitamin D, Calcium, Iron, and Potassium. These were specifically chosen because these are some of the most common deficiencies in the American diet. For the most part, eating a well, balanced diet is the best way to make sure you get a good balance of vitamins and minerals. This information can come in handy if you are targeting a specific health issue that may have to do with one of these nutrients. Some people may be told to look for high potassium foods because they have chronic low potassium. Those with kidney disease may avoid high potassium foods because of high potassium. Making sure you follow with a primary care doctor and get your labs tested regularly can help you figure out if there are any micronutrients you may need to pay more attention to.

Ingredients: And very last, we will discuss the ingredients list. On every label, you will find a list of all the ingredients in that food. These are listed in order of how much is in it. The most abundant ingredient is listed first, and the least abundant ingredient is listed last. In general, there is a lot of something in a product if it listed in the first few ingredients, and there are probably only small amounts of the ingredients toward the end, which often end up being spices, vitamins, and preservatives. Of course, the ingredients list is very helpful for people who need to avoid certain things, such as a person with Celiac Disease needing to avoid ingredients containing gluten. Occasionally, you will see a product try to be a little tricky with the ingredients list.

I am going to pick on a product called “Caulipower Pasta”. Let’s look at the ingredients for that:

Ingredients: Cauliflower, Corn Flour, Potato Starch, Rice Flour, Lentil Flour, Psyllium, Citrus Fiber, Sunflower Seed Oil, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum.

Here, cauliflower is the first ingredient, so we might think that this is a low carb pasta alternative made mostly from cauliflower, as the name suggests. However, if you look at the nutrition label, you will learn that 1 serving of this has 50 grams of total carbohydrates and 5 grams of fiber. This is little better than regular whole wheat pasta. How does this make sense if this is pasta made out of cauliflower? If you look closer at the ingredients, you will see the next 4 ingredients include 3 different types of flours (corn, rice, and lentil) and potato starch. Because these are 4 separate ingredients, they are able to be listed after cauliflower. If they were combined, all the flour and starch together would no doubt outweigh the cauliflower. This is the loophole that is being taken advantage of. But between looking at the label and the ingredients, you will know the whole story. For me personally, I know I would not pay a premium for this product after looking at the label and ingredients.

So, there you have it! You now understand every section of the nutrition label. I hope this information will help empower you to be more aware of what you are buying so that you can shop to support YOUR success and not the food industry’s success.

Are these any products you have gleaned interesting insights from after reading the nutrition label? I would for you to leave a comment and tell me about what you’ve found!