All packaged foods we eat have a nutritional label. The information on that label is a guiding factor in helping people make good or bad food choices. You can use the food label to help you determine whether eating that particular item is a good choice for you in your healthy menu for the day. Look at the label below found on a typical box of macaroni and cheese. Click through the slides below to learn more about this food label and how to interpret the parts.
Serving Size &
Number of Servings
Amount of Calori
Limit these Nutrients
Get Enough of These Nutrients
Percent Daily Value and Footnotes
The serving size and number of servings are both important for you to review as you make your menu decisions. For the box of macaroni and cheese, note that the serving size is about a cup—that’s a typical serving size for many pastas. This portion of the label should inform you how much of a particular product to eat for a meal or snack.
According to the nutrition label, one serving of macaroni and cheese contains 250 calories. Of those 250 calories 110 calories are from fat. Almost half of the calories in macaroni and cheese come from fat. Pay close attention to these numbers as you make your decisions.
As you look through a nutrition label, you will need to pay careful attention to the total fat, cholesterol, and sodium amounts. The important part of determining a balanced healthy diet is not that you never consume these things, but that you do not go well beyond the daily recommended amounts each day.
Just as you want to limit some contents, you want to make sure you getting enough of others. Vitamins and minerals are usually listed separately on a nutrition label so you can ensure you get the recommended amount each day. In some cases, it is okay to go above and beyond the daily recommended value, but in other cases, it is not. Talk to your doctor about which vitamins can be harmful when you consume too much.
Most nutrition labels include the percent daily value and some notes about how much total someone should consume. These values are determined by using a 2000 calorie diet and give you a general idea of how much of your healthy diet is fulfilled in one serving of the product. For example, one serving of macaroni and cheese provides you with 20% of your daily allotment of calcium, but 0% of your daily requirement of fiber. If you add up these values for all the foods you eat in a day, all of them should add up to close to 100%. If your daily calorie intake is more or less than 2000, you will have to adjust these percent values accordingly.
Question
Is eating macaroni and cheese a good choice or a bad choice?
Well, that depends on what other items you eat throughout the day. It also depends on how much of it you eat. If you eat the whole box (which isn’t hard to do), you will have consumed 500 calories, 36% of the recommended daily fat, and 40% of the calcium, but 0% of the fiber. You have to be careful to not overdo the fat and eat more fiber for the remainder of the day.
