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Health
Reading Food Labels
Serving Size, %DV, and Ingredient Lists
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Food labels help you compare products, control portions, and understand what you are putting into your body. The Nutrition Facts panel is designed to show serving size, calories, nutrients, and percent Daily Value in a consistent format. Reading it carefully matters because many packages contain more than one serving, and the numbers may not describe the whole container. A label can turn a quick food choice into an informed health decision.
Key Facts
- Total amount eaten = amount per serving x number of servings eaten.
- Calories eaten = calories per serving x servings eaten.
- Percent Daily Value shows how much one serving contributes to a recommended daily limit or goal.
- 5% DV or less is generally considered low, while 20% DV or more is generally considered high.
- Ingredients are listed in order by weight, from the largest amount to the smallest amount.
- Added sugars, sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat are nutrients to limit for heart and metabolic health.
Vocabulary
- Serving size
- The amount of food used as the reference for all numbers on the Nutrition Facts label.
- Calories
- A measure of how much energy the body can get from a food or drink.
- Percent Daily Value
- The percentage of a recommended daily nutrient amount provided by one serving of the food.
- Added sugars
- Sugars put into a food during processing or preparation, rather than sugars naturally present in ingredients like fruit or milk.
- Ingredient list
- The list of all ingredients in a packaged food, arranged from the greatest amount by weight to the least amount.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Ignoring the serving size, because the label numbers apply to one serving and not always the entire package.
- Reading calories per serving as calories per container, because eating two or three servings multiplies the calories and nutrients.
- Assuming natural means healthy, because marketing terms are not the same as measured nutrition facts or regulated nutrient claims.
- Looking only at sugar and missing sodium, saturated fat, and trans fat, because several nutrients can affect long-term health risk.
Practice Questions
- 1 A snack label says 160 calories per serving and 3 servings per container. How many calories are in the whole container?
- 2 A soup has 890 mg of sodium per serving and the package contains 2 servings. If you eat the whole package, how many milligrams of sodium do you consume?
- 3 Two granola bars have the same calories. Bar A lists oats, sugar, and oil as its first three ingredients. Bar B lists oats, almonds, and raisins as its first three ingredients, but both claim to be natural. Explain which label gives stronger evidence of a more nutritious choice and why.