Do You Think Nutrition Labels on Food Are Confusing?
We’ve received quite a few comments lately requesting nutritional information on our recipes. While we do provide these details for a few of our recipes when our recipe developers (who are registered dietitians) share that content with us – and we would very much love to add this functionality on all of our 500+ recipes down the road – unfortunately at this time we’re unable to offer that service across the site. However, we do try to add nutritional benefits of ingredients whenever possible, even if we aren’t able to provide exact calorie counts, and our Diabetes Friendly Recipes includes those appropriate for a low-sugar diet. Plus, there are many tools out there that allow you to simply copy and paste ingredients into a form to figure out everything from carbs to cholesterol.
That said, with so many of us concerned about health, the Nutrition Facts listed on everyday products you buy at the grocery store remain confusing to many consumers. Have you ever finished a bottle of tea or juice, thinking you only consumed X amount of calories, only to realize that the label considers the bottle to be 2.5 servings? Or have you ever heated up a can of soup only to do the math and figure out that it contains a whopping 66% of the recommended daily value of sodium?
The Center for Science in the Public Interest recently published the food label makeover image below, which has some interesting ideas about how nutrition labels on food products should be redesigned. Some of the ideas include making it more obvious how many servings are in an item, or when fat or sugar content is considered to be very high. It also separates the main ingredients from all the confusing ones that exist in minuscule amounts.
What do you think – do they address all of your concerns? Do you like the classic nutrition label as it is? What changes would you make to food labels? Let us know in the comments.