Guide to Reading Ingredients Labels
Reading ingredient labels allows you to increase the nutrients you need in your diet and to limit the ones you want to cut back on. The label, taken as a whole, allows you to envision how a particular product fits into your daily diet. At the end of the day, the numbers you read on nutrition labels should add up to 100% of your daily needs.
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Calories
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All of the information on an ingredient label is tied to the serving size, which is listed at the top of the label. If you eat more than one serving, you'll need to remember to multiply the other information by the number of servings you've eaten. If you eat less, divide.
Listed next on the label are the number of calories per serving and how many of those calories are provided by fat. All of the information on the label is based on a 2,000-calorie-per-day diet. Forty calories per serving is considered low, 100 calories is moderate, and 400 or more is high.
The calories per serving figure helps you estimate what percentage of your total intake will be provided by this food.
Nutrients
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The next section of the label breaks out the nutrients that an average American eats in adequate amounts, including what sort of fats are contained in the calories and what percentage of your daily intake they provide. Cholesterol, sodium and potassium are also listed. The lower these numbers are, the more healthful the food is for you.
Carbohydrates and proteins are also listed, with a breakdown of dietary fiber and sugars included here. Remember that the percentages to the right of the ingredient refer to how much of your recommended daily intake those ingredients provide.
Vitamins A and C, calcium, iron and folic acid are all nutrients that improve your health and can reduce the risk of certain diseases. These percentages are listed next on the label.
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Daily Values
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Further down, the nutrition label explains the Percent Daily Values with a chart. These values don't change from product to product. The chart lists both a 2,000-calorie diet and a 2,500-calorie diet. The total amounts of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium and carbohydrates recommended per day are listed.
Some of the numbers are different for the 2,500-calorie-a-day diet. For instance, a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet should have less than 20 grams of saturated fat per day, while a 2,500-calorie-per-day diet should have fewer than 25 grams.
Ingredients
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The final section lists all the product's ingredients, in order from the highest amount to the lowest. Some ingredients are followed by the ingredients used to make them, in parenthesis. If you have allergies, reading the ingredients label will help you avoid products that may cause reactions. If you're dieting, learning all of the different names for sugar, like high fructose corn syrup, will help you make healthier choices.
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