Nutritional labels are essential to building a healthy diet with store-bought foods. They operate as a key to various nutrients, healthy and unhealthy, that are present in your food and a significant concern to your health. Most nutritional labels are divided into three categories: total calories (which tells you the food's value as an energy resource); nutrients considered unhealthy and potentially dangerous if over-consumed; and vitamins and minerals, all of which are beneficial to your health. The daily value percentages featured on the label are based on a 2,000-calorie diet.
Step 1
Find the serving size. This is the amount of food from which the numbers are taken. The amount you have consumed of the nutrients listed will depend on how much of that food you have eaten relative to the serving size. The serving size is found at the top and will tell you not only the size per serving, but the number of servings found inside the package.
Step 2
Identify the following sections: total fat, cholesterol and sodium. Underneath total fat you will also find the sub-categories saturated fat and trans fat. These are the nutrients you want to avoid. The right-hand side of the nutritional label lists the daily value as a percentage. Typically, you want to avoid foods featuring more than 20 percent per serving of your daily need for these nutrients.
Step 3
Locate total carbohydrates and sugars lower down on the label. This helps to give you an idea of the type of energy found in the food. Simple energy found in sugars will give you a jolt immediately, while carbohydrates as a whole can vary from simple to complex and last hours. You typically want foods where the sugars measured in grams are a much smaller number than the carbohydrates measured in grams.
Step 4
Identify dietary fiber, protein and the vitamins and minerals, which are usually located below a thick black bar. These are healthy nutrients, and the more a food has of each of these, the better. The amount of protein will give you an idea of how filling the food will be and aid you if you are trying to gain muscle mass.
Step 5
Check out the footnote at the bottom. It will further explain the upper limits you should be mindful of for the undesired nutrients, and will show you how that recommended limit changes based on your specific caloric needs.
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