How to Use Nutritional Labels
June 23, 2009 by Gail Grannum
Filed under Healthy Eating Nutrition
Serving Size Tells Your Accurate Calories
How to Use Nutritional Labels
Fact – you have full control of your own health. It’s a good thing that almost all foods we buy come with nutrition labels. Of course, it’s also the age where there are more foods that are unhealthy for us, which makes the nutrition facts label on foods all the more important. Nutrition labels tell you what exactly your favorite can of soup contains, and I don’t mean the ingedients. The nutrition label is also sometimes called Nutrition Facts.
The first thing you should look for in the nutrition label is serving size, which usually uses a common measurement unit such as ‘cup’. It also indicates how many grams that one serving makes. Right below it can be found exactly how many servings there are in one pack (or can). Pay attention to this part of the nutrition label because if you don’t you may actually consume two servings instead of one, essentially doubling your calorie intake.
The next part to look at on a nutrition label is the amount of calories per serving. This is useful when you already know how many calories you need in a day in order to maintain, lose, or gain weight. If the nutrition label on the canned soup tells you that one serving already contains 120 calories, you can deduct that amount from your recommended daily amount of calories and see how much more calorie allowance you have for that day.
The nutrition label also tells you how much of the different types of nutrients you’re getting. This is expressed in grams or milligrams. The three main sources of these are fat, carbohydrates and protein. The nutrition facts label tells you directly how many calories come from fat. It’s important to take a look at the fat content, cholesterol and sodium because these are the nutrients you have to eat less of.
Below the number of grams per nutrient, the nutrition label also tell you how much Vitamin A, C, calcium and iron is present. These, including dietary fiber are the nutrients that you need to eat more of. The percentage in which these are expressed in shows how much it covers your recommended daily amount. When a nutrient is 5% in daily value or below, you’re getting a low amount of it. When a nutrient is 20% in daily value or above, it’s a bit high. This part of the nutrition label will help inform you if you’re getting too much fat from a product or too little dietary fiber, for example.
Reading and understanding a nutrition label is not rocket science. It just requires common sense, knowing the good stuff from the bad and making the right choices based on that. Nutrition labels – always check them out.
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If you are diabetic, in addition to the information on this website concerning diabetes, eHow has a great series of interest. They also have a video regarding Reading Nutritional Labels for Diabetics.
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