Every time you go to the store and buy any food or drink, you will find nutrition facts on the package. These facts will tell you everything about the product, so next time you want to want to go all out on those new chocolate cookies, flip the package first and check out the nutrition facts. Maybe you will think twice before you eat the whole package. Reading the nutrition labels includes understanding them too, of course.
What are nutrition facts?
To put it simply, nutrition facts tell you how much calories a certain product has, how many fat, how many of this fat is saturated or trans fat, the cholesterol amount, sodium, how many carbs, fibers, sugar, proteins and vitamins a certain product has. Depending on the nutrition facts of the product, you can see if it’s good for you or if it does more damage than good to you. Many fast food restaurants have nutrition facts for their products too, so that you are aware how much carbs or protein you will take in when eating fries or a cheeseburger.
What should you be aware of when reading the labels?
When searching for nutrition facts of products, it’s best to look for products with high amount of nutrients like vitamins, calcium, iron, and smaller amounts of fat, sodium and cholesterol. Products with more fiber are always better for you than those who have no fiber at all. As for daily values on nutrition facts labels, if the percentage of daily values is lower than 5%, then that’s considered low intake, and if it’s more than 20%, then it’s considered high intake. Be sure to look after those values too, and based on that, find foods with nutrition facts that best suit your needs.
How about nutrition facts for food that isn’t packaged?
You can easily find nutrition facts on packaged food, as regulation require for every packaged food to have a nutrition facts table for the whole package, and for 100g or a serving of the product. When it comes to food that is not packaged, like fruit, or vegetables, or meat from the local store, there is a solution – you can find many nutrition tables online, and there are also sites that have a fair amount of nutrition facts about different foods, so you can easily see what you eat, how you eat and if your diet is healthy or if it could use some more improvement.
