How to read the nutrition facts label?

Think about your favourite chocolate chip cookie. In its composition, there’s a certain amount of sugar, fat and other ingredients. Besides the taste, how do you know what impact eating this cookie will have on your health? Just read the nutrition facts label on the packaging – an answer that is as simple as it is complex.

Many consumers in Europe have a hard time understanding the nutritional information presented on a food label. In Portugal, a 2021 study showed that consumers read the food packaging but struggle with interpreting the nutrition facts label. When it comes to buying, the list of ingredients (the fewer and the simpler, the better) and specific attributes – lightly processed, locally produced food, no artificial additives, colourings or preservatives, and free of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), for example – are of importance, although it can be challenging to understand all nutritional information.

Beyond the nutritional quality of food, brands and retailers have sought to improve the quality of the nutrition facts label. One way is creating standards that help consumers make the right choices. It is time to understand how to read a food label.

Nutritional information is presented on food labels, usually in the form of a table. It indicates the average values of energy, lipids, carbohydrates, sugars, fibre, protein and salt that each 100 g or 100 ml of the food in question contains. Generally, there are also values for the average portion indicated, depending on the food and its Reference Intake (RI) percentage.

Simple carbohydrates include fructose (present in fruit), lactose (from milk and dairy products), but also sucrose (the name given to the typical “cooking sugar”, present in products such as desserts or soft drinks – a type of carbohydrate to reduce or avoid). Complex carbohydrates include fibre (found in whole grains and cereals, legumes, fruit and vegetables) and starch (found in potatoes and cereals and cereals).

When reading the nutrition food label, check the amount of carbohydrates, including sugars, and choose products with less sugar. Ideally, you should opt for foods whose sugar is naturally present, i.e. without added sugar.

We already know what each element of the nutrition facts label means, but how do we know if 10 g of sugar is considered a high amount? Or how to assess whether a yogurt is low in fat? In order to help answer questions like these, the Portuguese Directorate-General for Health has established two label decoders, one for food and one for drinks. For every 100 g or 100 ml, respectively, the amount of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt present is assessed.

The amount of each of these four nutrients is classified as high (in red), medium (in yellow) and low (in green). The aim is to help identify the most balanced food products, opting for foods and drinks whose nutrients are mostly in the green category, moderating those with one or more nutrients in the yellow category and avoiding those with one or more nutrients in the red category.

We’ve prepared the following illustrations – take them with you next time you’re in the supermarket to help you understand the ingredients in each product.

Bearing these parameters in mind, and answering the question that started this article, if your favourite chocolate chip cookie has, for example, 30 g of sugar per 100 g, this is high and falls into the red category. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t eat them, but you should eat them occasionally and in smaller quantities.

According to the European Union (EU), food labels should:

• Contain the complete list of ingredients, including any food additives, information on allergens and the number of certain ingredients, presented in descending order by weight. The first ingredient in the list is the one with the highest concentration.
• The percentage of certain ingredients that appear in the product’s name is highlighted on the food label or are essential to characterise the food or distinguish it from other foods. For example, the label of an apple pie should indicate the percentage of apple in the list of ingredients.
• Indicate allergens clearly and distinctively from other ingredients by using a different font/size or background colour.
• Use the word contains to present the allergens (e.g. “contains gluten”) if no list of ingredients is provided.

Origin, preservation, and instructions

In addition to nutritional, ingredient, and allergen information, food labels should also contain information on the weight or net volume, country of origin, name and location of the producer, special conditions of use and storage (e.g., “store in the refrigerator after opening”), as well as instructions for use.

It is possible that you have already crossed paths with a colour code and letters present in front of a food package. This is called Nutri-Score and is a food labelling system that allows consumers to quickly assess the nutritional profile of a food using a colour system.

Intuitively, dark green (or A) is associated with foods with a more balanced nutritional composition, and red (or E) is associated with foods with lower nutritional quality and, often, with higher amounts of fats, sugar, or salt.

It is important to note that the Nutri-Score should be used in addition to the other nutritional information on the label, and that its purpose is to facilitate the choice between similar foods in the same category and produced industrially. This means that the Nutri-Score should not be used to compare plain milk with chocolate milk, for example, but rather to compare different chocolate milks.

Foods such as fruit and vegetables, which are essential to the Mediterranean diet, are exempt from the Nutri-Score application. This label can only be found on pre-packaged products that have undergone some kind of processing.