Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label
Getting Started
Before you start this lesson, go to your pantry and pick up a few food products that have a Nutrition Facts label. If you have two similar products that you can compare, that would be great. You probably have two different kinds of cereal or maybe two kinds of soup. You get the idea. As you learn about each point on the label, see if you can find that information on one of your food products.
What You Will Learn
This lesson will help you to better understand the Nutrition Facts label. You will learn how to use it to make healthier choices in the supermarket.
Introduction
Like many things you do–caring for your family, job responsibilities, preparing meals and taking care of your home–healthful eating is a balancing act. It takes skill to get it right.
Health experts agree that what you eat and how much you eat affects your health now, and in the future. It is important for you to understand the links between diet and health and develop skills to consistently make informed food decisions.
There are four tools to help you do just that! First, the Dietary Guidelines are guidelines based on what foods we should eat to maintain our health. Second, the Food Guide using six main food groups shows us how much to eat each day to be healthy. We need to eat a variety of food from each of the food groups. The Nutrition Facts label is the third tool for healthier eating. Learning to use it will help you make healthier food choices. Fourth, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) Eating Plan is an additional plan recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
History
Nutrition labeling has been around since the 1970s. In the early 1990s, however, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) revised the food label in major ways. (USDA regulates labels on meat and poultry, and FDA regulates labeling on all other food products.) Starting in 1994, food manufacturers were required to use the Nutrition Facts label on their products.
Label Changes
Nutrition labels are now mandatory for most packaged foods and voluntary for many raw foods. The nutrition panel has been redesigned to reflect today's health concerns and make it easer to understand and use. The nutrition panel is called Nutrition Facts.
What's on the Label
The government has set strict definitions for terms that can be used to describe a food's nutrient content. These are free, low, reduced, high, less, more, light, good source of, lean and extra lean. On the package you will see words like low-fat, high fiber and no cholesterol.
Currently there are 16 health claims that are allowed to be used on food labels. They are based on sound research proving the relationship between a nutrient or food and a disease. These claims are regulated by the government and give important information about how diet affects health.
Find the ingredient list on your food package. Read the list of ingredients. Ingredient lists are required on labels of all foods with more than one ingredient. The ingredients are listed in order by weight, from most to least. If you have food allergies, the ingredient list can help you identify foods that might be a problem for you.
Food labels tell a lot about a food. They don't suggest what foods to eat. That's your decision and it should be based on the Food Guide. But labels can help you make the best food choices, choices that benefit you now and in the future, too.
Nutrition Facts Label
Let's take a look at a Nutrition Facts label. We'll start at the top and work our way down. You'll want to follow along on a food package you have in hand or on the label included here.
Serving size is the first thing you will see on the top of the label. Calorie and nutrient content are given per serving. Serving sizes have been standardized for most foods. They reflect the amounts people actually eat. Standardized servings make it easier to make comparisons. Servings are given in common household measures as well as metric measure. For example, the serving size here is one cup or 228 grams.
Remember that a serving and a helping are not the same thing. If you eat more or less than the serving size on the label, you'll need to adjust the amounts of nutrients accordingly. Just for fun, check the serving size on your box of cereal. Next time you serve yourself a bowl, measure out one serving. Is this more or less than you normally eat?
Next is servings per container . This tells you how many servings you can expect to get. In this package there are two one-cup servings. The next part of the label tells you how many calories and nutrients are in each serving of the food.
Calories per serving is first. In this food there are 260 calories in each one-cup serving. Remember, if you eat two servings, you have to double the calories and all the nutrients. Of those 260 calories, 120 calories are from fat. This is shown to help you meet the dietary guidelines that recommend people get no more than 30% of their calories from fat. This food has 120 of the 260 calories from fat, or 46% calories from fat.
Nutrients listed on the label are those most important to the health of today's consumers. Some nutrients we should try to eat less of such as fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. Some nutrients we need more of such as fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron. The label tells you how much of each of these nutrients is in a serving of the food. It's hard to know if that amount is a lot or a little.
To make your job easier, the Nutrition Facts label includes % Daily Value. The % Daily Value shows you how a food fits into your overall diet.
% Daily Value (%DV) is a reference number based on the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA). The percent DV (%DV) listed on Nutrition Facts labels tells adults what percentage of the DV is provided by 1 serving. % DVs are based on a 2,000-calorie diet. Your required Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs. For example, if you see a food contains 200 milligrams of cholesterol and 200 milligrams of sodium, would you know it is high in cholesterol and low in sodium? The % Daily Value is the clue. It tells you that it has 66% of your daily value for cholesterol and 8% of your daily value for sodium. Daily Values are based on a daily diet of 2,000 calories. Cholesterol, sodium, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron do not change on a higher or lower caloric intake.
A neat trick you can use is to remember the 5 and 20 rule. If a food has 5% or less of a nutrient, it is considered low in that nutrient. If it has 20% or more, it's considered high.
To learn more about the food label, click on the locator address: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~acrobat/nutfacts.pdf
Descriptive Terms
Prior to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, many descriptive terms used on labels were not regulated. Today, food products using descriptive terms on food labels must meet strict regulations. Understand that it isn't important or even possible to memorize all the definitions. It's only important to know that these terms have strict regulations. The list below will help you understand what the descriptive terms mean.
Label Language
Just like the Nutrition Facts, nutrient content claims are defined for one serving. For example, that means that low- fat cheese has no more than three grams of fat per serving.