Food Labels

The Nutrition Facts label serves as a guide for making choices that may affect your long term health. This manual provides you with the information you need to start today's nutrition label.

FDA's food label is printed on most packaged foods. Food labels are an easy way to find calories and nutrients in a certain amount of food. For example, when you read the food label, you can see that it contains calories, fat, protein, sodium and other ingredients. Many packaged foods contain multiple foods. The renewed food label is easier to see because the number of calories is displayed with a larger print than before. The latest food label also includes information on "adding sugar". Sugars added include sugar or sucrose including beet and sugarcane; corn syrup; honey; maltose syrup; and other sweeteners added to foods and beverages such as sugar or glucose. Fruits and milk contain natural sugar, and the label does not contain sugar. The American dietary guidelines from 2015 to 2020 require that sugar consumption per day is less than 10%.

In the food label, the total sugar content in the food is stated. This includes natural sugars contained in foods such as milk and fruits, which are part of a healthy and balanced diet. "Sugar without sugar" may be displayed on the food label, but by checking the ingredient list of the food label it can be confirmed whether the food contains many added sugar. Sugar types of interest include glucose, sucrose, maltose, hydrolyzed starch and honey. However, even if you drink two or more glass of wine, you can only count up to one juice at a time. This is mainly because it contains fewer fibers than whole fruits and vegetables. Therefore, we recommend that you limit the amount of drinking juice. Ideally, the goal of 5 A DAY should be composed of various fruits and vegetables.