How to read the food label

The food label is a mandatory system that allows you to know the nutritional information of an industrialized product, since it indicates what its components are and in what quantity they are, in addition to being informed which are the ingredients used in their preparation.

Reading the food label helps you to know what's inside the packaging, making it easier to make decisions when buying an industrialized product, since it allows you to compare similar products and evaluate the amount of nutrients you have, checking if it corresponds to a healthy product or not. In this way, it is possible to control some health products, such as diabetes, overweight, hypertension and gluten intolerance, for example. However, the reading of labels must be done by all people to improve their eating and consumption habits.

The information on the food label can vary from one country to another, but most of the times the amounts of trans fat, sugars, if it contains gluten or traces of peanuts, nuts or almonds, for example, are specified, as they are normally associated with food allergy.

To understand what is on the label, you must identify the nutritional information and the list of ingredients:

Nutritional information

Nutritional information is usually indicated within a table, where it is possible to first determine the portion of the product, the calories, the amount of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fibers, salt and other optional nutrients, such as sugar, vitamins and minerals.

1. Portion

In general, the portion is standardized to facilitate the comparison with other similar products, with homemade measures, such as 1 slice of bread, 30 grams, 1 package, 5 cookies or 1 unit, for example, usually being informed.

The portion influences the amount of calories and all other nutritional information of the product. In some foods, the nutritional table may be provided per serving or per 100 grams of the product.

2. Calories

Calories are the amount of energy that a food or organism provides to fulfill all its vital functions. Each food group provides an amount of calories: 1 gram of carbohydrate provides 4 calories, 1 gram of protein provides 4 calories and 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories.

3. Nutrients

In this section of the food label, the amount of carbohydrates, fats, proteins, fibers, vitamins and minerals that the product contains per serving or per 100 grams is indicated.

It is important that in this session the person pays attention to the amount of fats, since it is informed the amount of trans and saturated fats that the food has, in addition to the amount of cholesterol, sodium and sugar, it is important to limit the consumption of these products, since that increase the risk of developing chronic diseases.

As for vitamins and minerals, it is important to check how much they contribute to the body, as the ingested amount of these micronutrients can decrease the risk of some diseases and improve health. Therefore, if the person has a disease that it is necessary to increase the consumption of any of these micronutrients, one should choose what he needs in greater quantity, as for example in the case of anemia, in which it is necessary to increase the consumption of iron.

4. Percentage of daily value

The percentage of daily value, represented as% DV, indicates the concentration of each nutrient per serving of food based on a 2000 calorie diet per day. Therefore, if the product indicates that there is 20% sugar, it means that 1 portion of that product provides the 20% of total sugar that should be ingested daily.

List of ingredients

The list of ingredients indicates the amount of nutrient present in the food, in which the components in greater quantity are at the front, that is, the list of ingredients follows a decreasing order.

So if in a package of cookies on the list of ingredients on the label the sugar comes first, be alert, because its quantity is too large. And if wheat flour comes first in wholemeal bread, it indicates that the amount of common flour is very large, and so the food is not that whole.

The list of ingredients on the label also contains additives, dyes, preservatives and sweeteners used by the industry, which often appear as strange names or numbers.

In the case of sugar, different names can be found such as corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, concentrated fruit juice, maltose, dextrose, sucrose and honey, for example. See 3 steps to decrease sugar consumption.

How to Compare Different Food Labels

To compare products, nutritional information must be evaluated for the same amount of each product. For example, if the labels of 2 types of bread give the nutritional information for 50 g of bread, then it is possible to compare the two without making other calculations. However, if the label of one bread provides the information for 50 g and the other provides the data for 100 g of bread, it is necessary to make the proportion to properly compare the two products.

Learn more about reading the labels in the following video: