The Nutrition Facts Label is a helpful tool to help you understand your food choices, but it can be confusing if you don't know what to look for.
When looking at the Nutrition Facts Label the very first thing you should look at is the product's serving size. Looking at the serving size first is important because the rest of the information on the Nutrition Facts Label will be based on that serving size. The serving size on the label will also list the number of servings per package.
In 2020, serving sizes were updated to reflect how much people typically eat or drink today—not how much they should consume. It's not meant to be a reflection of what someone should eat or drink at one time; instead, it's more like an estimation of what people typically have in one sitting.
To put the serving size into action, let's look at an example of a Nutrition Facts Label for brown rice:
In this example, one serving is equal to 2/3 cups (55 g) and total servings per container is 8 servings.
If you ate 2 cups, then you would need to triple the calories and nutrient content from the label based on your actual consumption. This is because 2 cups are three servings of brown rice.
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One serving of 2/3 cup = 230 calories.
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Three servings at 2 cups = 690 calories.
So, when first looking at labels, ask yourself "What serving size am I consuming?" so that you know exactly how much nutrients are being consumed by your body at that time.