The Importance of Reading Food Labels

If you're serious about eating healthfully, you'll have to master an important skill: reading the nutrition labels on food packages.
     You may have noticed food labels look a little different these days. These new food labels have many advantages: First and foremost, they're designed to help consumers compare food products. For example, nutrition information is uniform. Labels must list the same nutrients - those most important  to your health - such as total fat, cholesterol, sodium, and total carbohydrate. Serving sizes have been standardized: Because they're based on the average amount of the food usually eaten at one sitting, you can easily compare the nutritional values of similar products. Another new feature is the Percent Daily Values. These numbers show how these foods fit into a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.
     Take a look at the food label on the facing page. You can easily spot the new labels with their Nutrition Facts boldly displayed. Serving size is listed first. Incidentally, when you assess calories and nutrients, be honest with yourself. If the serving size indicated on the label of your favorite ice cream is one-half cup, but you usually fill your bowl to the brim, you need to figure your calories based on the amount you actually consume - not just the standard serving size. Notice also that the label provides the total calories and the number of calories from fat.
     The Percent Daily Values appear next. The government has set these values based on current nutrition recommendations, such as the suggested limitation on calories from all sources of fat (Total Fat on the label) to no more than 30 percent of total calories. This recommendation is represented on the lower part of the label by the Less than 65g entry for Total Fat in a 2,000 calorie diet.
     This simply means that in a diet consisting of 2,000 calories, no more than 65 grams (which is equivalent to about 30 percent of total calories) should come from total fat. The 3 grams of fat in the sample food label constitutes about 5 percent  of the maximum of 65 grams allowed for one day. This is a small amount of fat, leaving you plenty of room to consume a variety of foods before reaching the maximum fat consumption for the day.
     This same information is given for cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, and protein.
     Percent Daily Values are also supplied for vitamins A and C, calcium, and iron.