How to Decipher Food Labels

One of the first steps in taking charge of your health is learning how to decipher food labels. After all, this is key in knowing what exactly you are putting into your body. Here are some basics to understanding the fine print.

Servings

Every packaged food should state how many servings are in each package and what size the serving is. The amount of calories per serving and percentage of calories from fat per serving is also found here. Don’t assume that an “individually packed” item is a single serving. Many items such as chips, drinks and various bars come two servings per pack. This can help you eliminate confusion when something touts low-calorie content per serving but the serving size is, in fact, smaller than the size you will likely consume.

Nutrition Facts

This tells you the amount sodium, cholesterol, fiber and sugars in each serving as well as prominent vitamins and nutrients. There is often a percentage to the right of the amount that is based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. If you are trying to limit your sodium intake, for example, this can assist you in deciding whether a food would be detrimental or helpful towards your goal. This is also where you can find how much fat is present as well as the type of fat. While saturated fat might be expected in some healthy items, seeing trans fat listed will likely raise a red flag.

Ingredients

Packaged food comes with a list of ingredients even if only one is present. Get to know which types of ingredients are harmful to your health and scan this list prior to purchasing. Look for items with short ingredient lists that are primarily filled with ingredients you recognize. If you see a long list of words you can’t pronounce, chances are that it is overly processed and may include unhealthy chemicals and additives.

Organic

If you see an organic label it means the food is made with a minimum of 95% of organic material. These ingredients have been grown without the use of pesticides, growth hormones, antibiotics and various other unacceptable methods. “100% organic” means everything on the list was grown in this manner. “Made with organic ingredients” translates to 70% or more of the items are organic.

There are a lot of layers of nutrition to understand when learning about what is best for your health. It’s important to continually educate yourself with information from sources that are reliable. Taking online food quizzes can help you figure out where you are lacking in your understanding and give you a place to start a conversation with your doctor or other health professional concerning eating for healthy living.

* This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, we may or may not receive a small commission which helps to support this site.