Many of the consumers aware of the nutrition facts showed by the products they consume everyday, but however not most of the consumer know how to use the nutrition facts due to the facts that they feel it is too complicated and too much data in the nutrition facts.
In fact, the nutrition facts are designed to ease the consumer reading, but however, the consumer must know how to use it, adopted from FDA website and Canada Health website, I summarized out the steps required to use the nutrition facts:
1. The serving size:
It is the size recommendation by the manufacturer on each serving. Please bare in mind that, a package of food might contain 5-6 serving size, it is the trick used by the manufacturer to claim that their product are low in calories, sugar etc. So simply multiply the nutrition fact by the serving size if you want to eat whole package per serving
2. Calories
Calories indicate how much calories (energy) you will obtain when you consume the food product, major mistake made by consumer is that they add up both calories and calories from fat, in fact, we just need to read the main calories to know how much energy we obtain. For example, 1 serving of the food product above provide 250 calories and from the 250 calories, 110 calories are from the fats
3.Limit Fats, Sodium, cholesterol and get Enough of fiber and vitamins
Most of us tends to consume more fats, sodium and cholesterol in our daily life, so by reading the nutrition facts, one can limit these nutrient as these nutrient may increase our risks to certain diseases. Beside the above mentioned nutrient, potassium and carbohydrate should be limited too. We should get enough vitamins and dietary fiber and the other hand, these nutrient helps us to improve our health.
4. % Daily Value (DV)
This is the main part which consumer must see when purchasing the food products, for all the nutrient, 5% or lesser DV is low, and 15% and higher DV is a lots. The nutrient should be equally absorb into our body throughout the day by consuming 3 meals per day.
5. Footnote
Tells us that the % DV is based on a 2,000 calories diet per day, which is the calories needed by average man per day. To check out how much calories you need per day, you can use the Basal metabolic rate calculator which is widely available in the web to check it.
Lastly, be a wise consumer and choose the food to consume.
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