How to read Nutrition Facts labels on your food packages?

So we've learnt that fats contain more energy then carbohydrate and proteins, so how exactly can we use the information to slim down?

Let's start with the common things in life that we see but ignore most of the time, the nutrition facts labels on our food packages.

You may have noticed that not all food packages have nutrition facts labels, well that's simply because they were produced in different countries and not all countries made it mnadatory to contain information as such.

One interesting point to note in the US's labeling is that, fat amounts less than 0.5g are rounded to 0g. For example, if a product contains 0.45g of trans fat per serving, the label would show 0g of trans fat! So if the package contains 18 servings, the product actually contains a total of 8.1 g of trans fat when consumed all at once! This is how misleading such nutrition facts can be. The good news is that, (for those who are really keen in calculating fats consumption to keep it to the lowest), you can actually spot such misleading information by simply calculations.


Let'd look at one Nutrition Facts label:

From this label, it was written that the total calories is 130 (about 1/5 of a meal), given that it's a cornflakes pack, this should make a pretty 'slimming' snack for tea break.

Recalling that per gram of carbohydrate and protein is about 4cal and fats is about 9cal, a basic calculation will reveal that:

Fat energy = 0.5 x 9 = 0.45cal (rounded off to 5cal in the label)

Carbohydrate energy = 30 x 4 = 120cal

Protein energy = 4 x 4 = 16cal

total engery = 0.45 + 120 + 16 = 136.45cal

Noticed the discrepancy? Imagine you eat 2 packets of this, one for breakfast and one for tea break, you will be eating 12.9cal extra and in a week, you will have consumed 90.3cal extra calories.... Not exactly what you want to happen when you are in a low-cal diet.

This happens due to the rounding off of figures here and there in the guidelines and laws of food nutrition facts labels, so we as consumers have to be clear of what we are consuming.

Sometimes, you may also find a short-fall from the calculated calories stated in the label, when that happens, it's most likely because they have (purposely or not, you can decide) used the rounded-off value of the trans fat and saturated fat, which is less than 0.5g to calculate the value. So do be careful when labels and advertisement says the product is "Trans fat free", it simply means it's lesser than 0.5g, not that it's not really there, and that the calories of such products is in fact higher than what is reflected.

Read more about calories here and what it means.

Read more about your day's calories intake here and how your weight is really determined by your lifestyle.