Food Labeling

I’m very particular with what I eat, and the diet must meet my own high standards. Well I achieved that by reading the food labels before purchasing it.

Since the mid-90′s, nutrition facts were on the side of food products. Now, some packaged foods are getting new front-of-the-box labels. CBS Randall Pinkston reports on this ‘smart choices program’.

The nutrition facts label (also known as the nutrition information panel, and various other slight variations) is a label required on most pre-packaged foods in many countries.

In the U.S., the nutritional facts label lists the percentage supplied required in one day of human nutrients based on the average 2000 calorie a day diet.

With certain exceptions, such as foods meant for babies, the following Daily Values are used. These are called Reference Daily Intake values and were originally based on the highest 1968 Recommended Dietary Allowances for each nutrient in order to assure that the needs of all age and sex combinations were met.

Notice that these are older than the current Recommended Dietary Allowances of the Dietary Reference Intake. For Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E, Vitamin K, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and manganese, the current maximum RDA’s (over age and sex) are up to 50% higher than the Daily Values used in labeling, whereas for other nutrients the estimated maximal needs have gone down.

Products containing less than 5 g of fat show amounts rounded to the nearest 0.5 g. Amounts less than 0.5 g are rounded to 0 g. For example, if a product contains 0.45 g of trans fat per serving, and the package contains 18 servings, the label would show 0 g of trans fat, even though the product actually contains a total of 8.1 g of trans fat.