Be Smart - Understanding Food Labels and Nutrition Facts

Grocery shopping and reading labels are a delight for some and a real headache for others. Regardless of how you feel about them, determining whether a particular food product fits into your healthy diet plan has become easier. In addition to listing the amounts of macronutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrate including fiber), a food label may also indicate vitamin and mineral content of the product. This provides good information to help a consumer determine if a particular food product meet his or her nutritional needs.

What is on A Nutrition Facts Label?
Food labels are designed to help consumers make healthy food choices. In 1990, the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act went into effect. The USDA and the FDA developed these guidelines so that consumers would have access to useful nutritional information to help make smart choices.
But how do you make sense of a food label?
According to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, all packaged food products must contain the following information:

• Common name of the product
• Name and address of the product's manufacturer
• Net contents in terms of weight, measure or count, and
• Ingredient list and Nutrition Facts

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