How to Calculate the Percent of Daily Values

If you feel you are not eating a healthy diet, you should look at the daily values of how much you are supposed to eat of certain nutrients. To see what percent of these nutrients you are consuming, you need to know the amount you should eat (see Resources). Then, by looking at a package's food label, you can see how much of a nutrient you are actually getting from that food.

Instructions

• 1

  Look up the number of grams that your daily value should be. For example, assume you want to find out the percentage of the daily value of protein for your dinner. The daily recommended protein is 50 g.

• 2

  Read the label on your food and find the amount of nutrient grams your food has. In the example, assume dinner has 10 g of protein per serving.

• 3

  Determine how many servings of dinner you had. The food label tells you how large a serving is. Then you can determine your servings by comparing how much you ate to how much a single serving is. In the example, assume it is two.

• 4

  Multiply the amount in grams your food has per serving by the number of servings. In the example, 10 g times two servings equals 20 g.

• 5

  Divide the grams eaten by the recommended daily amount. In the example, 20 g divided by 50 g equals 0.4 or 40 percent.