Nutritional Information Guide

Most food or beverage packages have a nutritional guide printed on them. These guides have important information regarding calorie content, fat grams and vitamins or minerals that are in the food. Those looking to watch what they eat should pay attention to the nutritional information guide, so they can track calories, carbohydrates and fat grams with each meal. Serving sizes also are listed so you can see how much you should be consuming.

What to Look For

• The most important thing to look for is the serving size and how many servings are in each package. A bottle of soda, for example, might not appear to have that many calories, but there often is more than one serving in each package. Serving sizes are usually described in cups, grams and pieces. Calories are also important to look at so you can stay within a healthy range for your body. The number of servings consumed from each package must be added up for a total calorie count. Here are the general guidelines to calories per serving size:

  Low Calorie: Less than 50
  Moderate Calorie: 100 or less
  High Calorie: 400 or more

  Many caloric contents on nutritional information guides are based on a diet of 2,000 calories, so adjustments need to be made if you consume more or less than that to maintain a healthy weight. Eating more calories than necessary or not burning them off lead to weight gain and, potentially, obesity.

What to Avoid

• Limit items that are high in total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. These usually are listed toward the top of the nutrition guide. Too much fat, cholesterol and sodium can lead to chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and heart disease. Limit total fat grams to 65 or less, cholesterol should be less than 300 milligrams and sodium should not exceed 2,400 milligrams each day.

What to Get Enough of

• The final part of the nutritional information guide are things that should be consumed with each meal. Fiber, vitamins and minerals are all important to keep the body running smoothly internally and giving it the nutrition it needs to function. Calcium is very important because it improves bone strength, reducing the risks for getting osteoporosis, which causes bone brittleness. Eat at least 25 grams of fiber, 50 grams of protein and 1,000 milligrams of calcium daily.