Understanding the Nutrition Facts Label: Do You Know What You're Eating?

How much calcium is in macaroni and cheese? Which brand of macaroni and cheese has the least fat? The best way to learn this and more is to read the Nutrition Facts label found on all food packages. The information on the label can help you make better choices about what you eat.

Breaking It Down

Let’s look at a sample label for macaroni and cheese to find out what is inside.

• Packaged vs Prepared: The label below says this food has 250 as calories as packaged and 350 calories as prepared. The packaged value tells you how many calories in the food before you cook it. Prepared values include ingredients needed to cook a food. For this mac and cheese, the prepared values include the exact amount of milk and butter (or margarine) the directions on the package tell you to use.

*Amount in Box margarine with 0g Trans Fat and 2% Reduced Fat Milk preparation contains 13g total fat (4.5g sat fat, 0g trans fat), 720mg sodium, 10g total carbohydrate (2g dietary fiber, 7g sugars), and 10g protein.

The nutrient information on the label is based on a set amount of food. This amount is called the serving size. The serving size can be different from how much you actually eat. In the sample label above, one serving of macaroni and cheese equals 1/3 of the box. If you ate the entire package, you would eat nearly 3 times the amount of the nutrients listed on the label.

Calories are a measure of how much energy you get from food. Calories come from three sources: fat, protein, and carbohydrate. There are 250 calories in this food. 25 of the calories in one serving come from fat.

The top half of the nutrition label lists nutrients that can strongly affect your health. They can be divided into 2 groups: those to limit and those to get enough of.

Nutrients to Limit

Sodium 570mg 24% Too much of these can be bad for your health. Too much fat, cholesterol, or sodium may raise your risk of health problems like heart disease, some kinds of cancer, and high blood pressure.

Saturated fat and trans fat are very unhealthy. Unsaturated fats are a healthier type of fat. They do not have to be listed on a label. Most of the fat you eat should be unsaturated.

Eating too many calories in general can lead to overweight and obesity. Being overweight is a risk factor for many health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and osteoarthritis.

Nutrients to Get Enough of

These are a few of the nutrients that are beneficial to our health. Many Americans may not get enough. These include vitamins A and C, the minerals calcium and iron, and fiber. Calcium can help lower the risk of having weal or brittle bones (osteoporosis), while vitamin C acts as an antioxidant. Fiber helps to keep you regular. It may also to help lower the risk of some chronic diseases.

Here, you can find the total grams of carbohydrate in the product. One gram of carbohydrate equals 4 calories. Total carbohydrate includes dietary fiber and sugars. These and as other forms of carbohydrate are listed on the label.

The percent daily values (%DV) are listed in the right-hand column of the Nutrition Facts label. These tell you whether the nutrients in a serving of food add a little or a lot to your total daily nutrient intake. 5% or less is "a little" and 20% or more is "a lot."

What Is My Daily Value?

Comparing Percent Daily Values

The percent daily values are based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. They are listed in a table below the Nutrition Facts label. The information in this table is the same on all food products. (Small food products may not have this table if there is not enough room for it). These values are based on expert dietary advice about some of the nutrients you should get each day.

The label can help you figure out how much of these nutrients you should get each day. For example, if you have a 2,000 calorie goal you should eat less than 65 grams of total fat per day. You should eat as little saturated fat as possible. Focus on eating healthier fats. Too much cholesterol and sodium are both harmful to your health. The recommended amounts of cholesterol and sodium are the same for both the 2000 and 2500 calorie diets.

The daily values are a good guide. For example, just knowing that one serving of macaroni and cheese contains 3 grams of fat is not very helpful. But to know that this 3 grams accounts for 5% of the total amount you should have in a day is more useful.

The percent daily value makes it easy for you to compare the nutrient contents of different brands of the same kinds of foods. Check the serving size first to make sure that it is the same. This can help you choose the food with the lower percentage of fat or the higher percentage of calcium, for example.

There are no daily values for simple sugars and proteins.

There is no DV for simple sugar because there is no specific recommendation how much sugar we should eat each day. The amount of sugar listed here includes both natural sugars (like those in fruits and dairy products), as well as sugars added during processing. Check the ingredient list to figure out which type of sugars are in a food.

Usually, there is no DV given for protein. This is because most American adults and children over the age of four get plenty of protein in their daily diet. However, if a food package makes a specific claim about protein, like "high in protein," it must list the %DV. Each gram of protein provides four calories.

The daily value for calcium is 1,000 (milligrams) mg per day. To figure out the exact amount of calcium in a product, you will need to do a little math. Multiply the %DV by 10. If a container of yogurt contains 30% DV; multiply this by 10, which will give you the value of 300 mg.

The daily value here is 1,000 mg, which is the recommendation for people ages 19-50. However, pre-teens and teens (ages 9-18) need 1,300 mg per day, or 130% DV. People age 51 and older need 1,200 mg each day, or 120% DV.