Fun Facts About Food Labels

In most cases, restaurants are not required to provide nutritional information.

The Food and Drug Administration mandated food labels beginning in 1994, but not all people read them. Some seek only one kind of information, but food labels provide valuable information to manage a healthy diet.

Requirements

The FDA requires that most foods sold in stores contain nutrition information. Exceptions are foods with very little nutrition such as coffee, spices or alcohol. Restaurants are not required to use nutrition labels on their foods, although some choose to make this information available.

Information

The top of a food label identifies the size of one serving of that food. It also lists the calories, grams of fat, and milligrams of sodium that one serving contains. Additional information includes the amount of fiber, sugar and protein a food contains per serving.

Percent Daily Values

Food labels also list the percent daily values. In the case of fat, this percentage represents the amount of fat in a food serving relative to the maximum recommended daily allowance of fat in a 2000-calorie diet. For example, a 2000-calorie diet should contain no more than 65 grams of fat per day. A food that contains 20 grams of fat per serving has a percent daily value of 32 percent.

References

• LifeClinic: Food Labels

Resources

• KidsHealth: Food Labels