Every parcel upon the grocer's shelf speaks with two voices. The louder one is printed large upon the front, where words such as wholesome and natural and lightly sweetened are arranged to win a moment's confidence. The quieter voice is set in small type upon the side or the back, within the plain bordered panel the authorities require. That panel, and not the boast, is the fuller record, and a reader who learns its order can judge for himself what the front merely asserts.

Begin at the Top

The first line to find is not the calories but the serving size, and just beneath it, the number of servings the container holds. Everything printed below depends upon this figure, for every number on the panel describes a single serving and not, as the eye so often assumes, the whole of the package. A modest tally of calories may belong to a portion far smaller than one would willingly pour, and a package that looks like a single serving may quietly contain two or three. Read this line first, and read it honestly against the amount you truly intend to eat. Should you eat twice the stated serving, then every figure below must be doubled in your reckoning.

With the serving fixed in mind, the calories per serving follow plainly. They tell the energy the food provides, and they are best read against the whole of a day rather than in alarm at any single number.

The Figures Worth Weighing

Below the calories sit the nutrients, and a few of them reward particular attention. Sugars are now set down in two lines where once there was but one. Total sugars count every sort together, including those a fruit or a measure of milk carries by its nature. Added sugars, listed just beneath, count only what was stirred in during manufacture, and it is this second figure that rewards a careful eye, for it is the sweetening a body has no true need of.

Sodium, the measure of salt, is worth watching for anyone minding the heart or the blood's pressure, as a good deal of it hides in foods that do not taste especially salty. Dietary fiber, by contrast, is a figure one is generally glad to see rise, for it aids digestion and lends a lasting fullness for which the appetite is grateful. To weigh any of these quickly, the panel offers a companion column: the percent Daily Value, printed to the right. It sets each nutrient against a general daily reference, so that the reader need not carry arithmetic in his head.

A plain rule of thumb accompanies that column, and it is worth committing to memory. About five percent of the Daily Value or less is considered low in a nutrient for a serving, and about twenty percent or more is considered high. Thus the same column serves two purposes at once: it helps one seek more of what is wanted, such as fiber, and less of what is not, such as sodium or added sugar.

The List That Cannot Flatter

Below the numbered panel runs the ingredient list, which keeps an honesty of its own. By rule, the ingredients are set down in order of weight, the largest first and the least last. A reader who studies only the opening few names learns quickly what a food is chiefly made of. Where a sweetener, by whatever name it travels, stands near the front of the line, the food is built largely upon it, whatever the front of the package may murmur about wholesomeness. The list will not flatter, because its order is fixed by weight and not by the maker's preference.

Here, then, is the whole of the method. Read the serving size, and hold every later number against it. Note the calories. Weigh the added sugars, the sodium, and the fiber, using the percent Daily Value and its rule of five and twenty as a quick gauge. Then read the first several ingredients to learn what the food truly is. The front of the package is written to be believed; the panel and the list are written to be checked. A few seconds spent turning the parcel over is the surest defense a shopper has, and it costs nothing but the turning.