Food - How To Analyze Food Nutrition Labels

How To Analyze Food Nutrition Labels

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Analyze Food Nutrition Labels

Julian Cenkier

User-Submitted Article

While the food manufacturers are required to put the nutrition labels on the side of their packaging, it's not always easy to understand exactly what you're getting. People who have certain health conditions must pay particular attention to the nutrition labels to ensure they're buying products that won't exacerbate their health condition. Consumers have to be careful, however. Sometimes the labels appear to be misleading. Here are a few tips on how to analyze food nutrition labels.

Difficulty: Moderate

 

Instructions

1. Look at the serving size. One of the quickest way that people get confused with the food nutrition label is they don't look at what the manufacturer considers a serving size. For instance, on a box of cake mix, for a regular at 9 inch round cake, manufacturers recommend a serving of 1/12 of the cake. Stop and think for a minute. When you bake a cake for your family, do you get 12 slices of cake? You probably get more like six or maybe eight slices.
   
   
2. 
   
    Calibrate the serving size. It goes without saying that you must calibrate the manufacturers information to fit your family's eating habits. For instance, if you know that your family can only get six slices from a box cake while the manufacturer says you can get 12, the 1 gram of trans fat per serving is actually 2 grams per serving for your family.
3. 
   
    Analyze the fine print. While a product may claim in the numerical portion of the nutrition label to have 0 g of trans fat, take a moment and a magnifying glass to read the listing of ingredients at the bottom of the nutrition label. If any of the ingredients include partially hydrogenated oils, then the product does contain trans fat. Partially hydrogenated oil is the technical name for trans fat. Food manufacturers get away with listing the product as 0 grams of trans fat because the amount of trans fats falls below ½ gram per serving. That might be the reason why the manufacturer recommended serving size is so small.
4. Understand ingredient order. According to the Food and Drug Administration, manufacturers are required to list the ingredients in predominance order according to weight. If you have to stay away from sugar, run away from products that list sugar as its first, second or third ingredient.