How to Read a Nutrition Label

Reading nutrition labels is quite complicated – here is my attempt to simplify the process (feel free to give me feedback using the red ‘feedback’ tab at the bottom of the page which is anonymous.

1. Check the serving size
   1. Make sure it is reasonable (ie what you would usually eat)
   2. This is especially important when comparing two similar products since this is a common way companies ‘cheat’ (by shrinking their serving size).  Obviously to compare the amount of a substance (eg sodium) in two similar products, you have to compare the same serving size.
2. Calories – look at total calories and calories from fat (see below).
3. Fat
   1. General rule – want fat calories < 20% of total calories.
   2. To get calories from grams of fat, multiply by 9.
      1. For example if a package label says the total calories are 270 and the food contains 10 grams of fat, the calories from fat would be 90 (10 grams x 9 calories per  gram). Thus for the whole package 33% of the calories (90 out of 270  calories) come from fat which is HIGH.
   3. Total fat < 3 grams/serving, 20-30 grams per day
   4. The front of the package will often state fat % by weight – this is VERY misleading.
4. Salt/sodium
   1. Goal is to have a total intake of less than 2000 mg (2 grams) per day from all sources.
   2. Our body needs about  250 mg of sodium per day
   3. By just meeting our caloric requirements with fruits & vegetables we get about 500 mg of sodium per day, so we don’t need to worry about getting enough sodium.
   4. One teaspoon of salt has 2200  mg of sodium (including sea or Himalayan).
   5. Get rid of the salt shaker !  Try Mrs Dash (salt free, made from vegetables).
   6. A good rule of thumb is that the mg of sodium should not be greater than the number of calories per serving.  For example a food which is 100 calories per serving should have 100 mg of sodium (or less) per serving.
   7. Condiments can have a sodium/calorie ratio of up to 5:1 because you shouldn’t be consuming to much at a sitting.
5. Carbohydrates
   1. Lists total carbohydrates
   2. A great way to estimate the amount of ‘free’ carbohydrates is to subtract the number of grams of fiber from the number of grams of carbohydrate.  The smaller the better, ideally less than 12 g per serving.
   3. To compare foods with different serving sizes, look at the fiber as a percentage of total carbohydrates (eg if ‘Total carbohydrate = 10 g’ and fiber = 5 gram then 50% (5 / 10) of the carbohydrates are fiber.
   4. Fiber
      1. Goal 40 grams/day
      2. Look for >= 3 grams per 100 calories.
   5. ‘Sugars’ means total sugars – it is only the 
6. Ingredients
   1. Look for only a few total ingredients
   2. With grains you want WHOLE grains (not refined) which contain the entire grain kernel – the bran, germ and endosperm.
      1. Some say the word ‘whole’ which is good.  Other terms such as “rolled”, ”extruded” “stone ground”, and “cracked”, “crushed” represent whole grains.
      2. Cracked wheat (bulgur) and cooked grains are still whole grains.
      3. The terms multigrain, stone-ground, 100% wheat, seven-grain, durum, semolina, bleached/unbleached, enriched, or bran may sound good but do not indicate that the ingredient is a whole grain.
   3. Sugar
      1. The real problem is the added sugar. Don’t worry about sugar when eaten as part of the whole plant (ie fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains).
      2. Note that ingredients are listed on labels in descending order by weight.  This means that a product contains more of the first ingredients listed than the last.
      3. Avoid products with sugar in the first 3-5 ingredients.
      4. Some companies use the weight rule on labelling to hide how much added sugar is actually in a product.
         1. Instead of adding just one type of sugar, they add two or more, and the total weight of each of these is small enough that they are buried in the list.
         2. Sugar has many names including: brown rice syrup, cane juice, corn syrup, caramel, carob, corn sweetener, dextrose, dextran, maltodextrin, diastase, ethyl maltol, glucose, fructose, lactose, galactose, sucrose, honey, molasses, nectar, panocha, treacle, and barley malt. 
         3. Even though it is natural, agave is very high in fructose and should be avoided.
         4. Also watch out for ingredients ending with ‘ose’ – eg dextrose, maltose
         5. Another trick is removing water from the sugar source – eg evaporated cane juice, dehydrated honey.
   4. Names for milk products in ingredients  include: milk, cheese, casein, caseinate, lactalbumin, whey,
   5. Fats
      1. Hydrogenated oils (AVOID) – these are as bad as lard – eg margarine, shortening
      2. Saturated animal fat (AVOID): include lard, dairy (butter, cheese, milk, yogurt, sour cream, whipped cream, ice cream), chicken, turkey, meat, fish, eggs
      3. Saturated vegetable fat (AVOID) include coconut oil (70% saturated fat), palm oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter.

Useful Resources

1. Here is a simple handout on how to read a food label.
2. To look up specific ingredients see befoodsmart.com which has a nice A-B-C-D-E-F rating system.
3. Jeff Novick RD has some excellent resources – see his video (June 2022) as well as his guidelines (more here), worksheet, grid.
4. Here are a couple of videos I have made: How to read a nutrition label (32 min), How to Use Cronometer (16 min).
5. Here is a handout I made on “How to Read a Nutrition Label”.

LU 8/16/21