When buying healthier foods, most Canadian shoppers increasingly consult the new, approved nutrition information panels, but almost as many are confused by its numbers and claims. To make your next trip to the supermarket more practical, alive presents the essential facts about food labels.

Since there is little doubt that there is a strong relationship between diet and health, knowing how to decipher today’s food labels may be one of the most important steps for maintaining health. You may have a desire to eat foods that are good for you, but the reality is that developing excellent eating habits takes diligent work. Food labels are useful as valuable sources of product-specific information when making smart shopping decisions, such as letting you know how much salt and fat are in a meal of soup and crackers.

Before heading to the store, remember that individual nutrient requirements vary based on health and activity levels. Athletes in the midst of intense physical training can require more than 2,000 calories, and those in special circumstances such as pregnancy will need increased nutrient requirements, such as iron. A trained nutrition professional can help you determine your individual needs.

Browsing the Nutrition Facts

Most packaged foods have little square boxes that contain nutrition facts–important information about the nutritional levels of a product–which can puzzle shoppers. Here’s your guide to unscrambling the food label formula.

Serving Size

The information included in the nutrition facts is based on specified amounts of food in familiar units such as cups, tablespoons, and grams. But here’s the catch: the serving size listed may not necessarily be your serving size. A cereal may list the serving size as half a cup, but if you usually pour a full cup into your bowl, you’ll need to adjust the calories and other nutrients accordingly. “Food manufacturers have also been known to alter portion sizes to qualify for various health claims,” says Suzanne Carere, a registered dietician and professor of nutrition at George Brown College in Toronto. A company may reduce the portion size so that they can falsely claim foods as “low fat.”

Percent Daily Value (%DV)

Daily Values are listed as percentages and are meant to help you decipher how much of a given nutrient is in the food item. “The Daily Values for vitamins and minerals are based on guidelines for their recommended intake for a healthy population, whereas the Daily Values for carbohydrates and fat are based on an assumption of a 2,000 calorie diet,” says Carere. For example, 65 g of fat are recommended as the limit for a 2,000-calorie reference diet. If a product has 16 g of fat, then the %DV is 25 percent (16 divided by 65 times 100). The %DV can also be used as a rough benchmark to help you determine if one brand of bread has more fibre than another.

Core Nutrients

In addition to listing the number of calories in the indicated serving size, each nutrition facts panel is required to list serving-size quantities of the following 13 core nutrients.

Fat, Saturated and Trans

Matthew G. Kadey, MSc, RD, is a registered dietician, photographer, and freelance writer.

Source: alive #291, January 2007