Unravel the mystery of food labels

Don't feel embarrassed if you have trouble reading a food label. With a little help, learning to read a food label can be easy. And it will help you eat healthy throughout pregnancy.

Remember, you will need to add about 300 extra calories to your pre-pregnant diet. It will be important to make those count nutritionally. Empty calories from high fat, high sugar will provide you with the extra 300, but won't provide much nutrition for you and baby.

The food label tells the precise caloric and nutritional value of the food you're eating. That said, if it sometimes seems hard to make sense of the label, here's what to look for.

Serving size is the first place to start

Look at the serving size and the number of servings in the package. Serving sizes are expressed in familiar quantities such as cups or pieces. You need to compare the serving size to the servings you actually eat. For example, a serving of macaroni and cheese may be one cup cooked and the package may contain two cups. If you're eating the whole box you're eating two servings instead of one. That doubles the calories and other nutrient numbers.

You can also learn how many calories come from fat in one serving. If there are 250 calories in a serving and 110 of those calories come from fat, then if you ate the whole box of macaroni and cheese you'd be eating 500 calories, 220 of them from fat.

You'll want to limit these nutrients:

Total fat

Saturated fat

Cholesterol and sodium

Eating too much fat or sodium may increase your risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. Too many calories can put more weight on than you need, which might put you at risk for Type 2 diabetes.

You'll want to get plenty of these nutrients:

Dietary fiber

Vitamin A

Calcium

Iron

It's true what they say about Americans: We generally don't get enough dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron in our diet. Eating enough of these vitamins is important for the developing fetus. Not getting enough calcium can put you at risk for osteoporosis, a disease in which bones get brittle and can break easily. Calcium is especially important for nursing mothers. The baby will take some of the calcium from your body during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Let the labels on whole grain products and frozen vegetables light the way to a healthy diet.

What is the "% Daily Value?"

This tells you whether the nutrients in a serving contribute a little or a lot to your total daily diet. For example, when one serving of macaroni and cheese contains 18% of the daily value for fat, what does that mean? It means you have 82% of your fat allowance left that you can use for other foods. (Note that if you're eating the whole box, the "% daily value" for fat increases to 36%, more than one-third of your daily fat allowance.)

The "% daily value" is based on a diet of 2,000 calories. Even if you eat more or less than this, you can still use the "% daily value" as a frame of reference. A rule of thumb you can follow is this: 5% of the daily value is low and 20% is high. This means 5% is low for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium; but it's also low for the nutrients you want more of, such as calcium and fiber.

Date last reviewed: October 2002.

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