Making Sense of the Nutrition Facts Label: a users guide

Most of us have no clue what all that stuff on the Nutrition Facts label means to our health and diet. Follow this link to the US FDA website's easy to navigate explaination. This website helps the consumer understand how to read the DV (daily value), serving size, nutrient and caloric content and the footnotes on the label.

http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/foodlab.html

For example, on the Nutrition Facts label "serving size" is relative to the product and has nothing to do with RDA nutritional recommendations. The serving size is assigned to the label based upon the manufacturer's discrection. It simply exhibits serving size in relationship to the DV, nutrient and caloric content within the "serving size" indicated on the label. This can easily confuse and even mislead an unaware consumer. For example many ice cream products serving size is only two tablespoons. What a joke! Who only eats two tablespoons of ice cream? Not me that is for sure!

So what the saavy consumer must do is consider the amount they would really eat before accepting that the ice cream has only, say, 100 calories or only, say, five grams of saturated fat. By the time you eat a bowl full you have increased the "serving size" exponentially and therefore all the other information listed on the Nutrition Facts label.

Eat well, eat smart!

Posted by: Juliette Aiyana