Reading and Understanding Nutrition Labels

With today's food labels, consumers get:

• Nutrition information about almost every food in the grocery store
• Distinctive, easy-to-read formats that enable consumers to more quickly find the information they need to make healthful food choices
• Information on the amount per serving of saturated fat, cholesterol, dietary fiber, and other nutrients of major health concern
• Nutrient reference values, expressed as % Daily Values, that help consumers see how a food fits into an overall daily diet
• Uniform definitions for terms that describe a food's nutrient content--such as "light," "low-fat," and "high-fiber"--to ensure that such terms mean the same for any product on which they appear
• Claims about the relationship between a nutrient or food and a disease or health-related condition, such as calcium and osteoporosis, and fat and cancer. These are helpful for people who are concerned about eating foods that may help keep them healthier longer.
• Standardized serving sizes that make nutritional comparisons of similar products easier
• Declaration of total percentage of juice in juice drinks. This enables consumers to know exactly how much juice is in a product.