To ensure that consumers know what is in the foods they buy, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires that the packaging of every manufactured food product display certain information. For starters, ingredients must be listed in descending order of weight. Labeling must also include a "Nutrition Facts" panel. Although the intent is informational, such labels do not supply all the facts, especially when it comes to carbohydrates.

The Impact on Blood Sugar

Unfortunately, the food label does not state the glycemic index of the foods contained. The best method is to become familiar with the higher glycemic index foods so you can identify the foods to avoid. It is not feasible to memorize the entire list and values of the glycemic index tables. Most people should start off by identifying foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, which is present in many foods one would not expect. Remember that the ingredients lists is written so that the items listed first are the most common and the farther down the list the less common that component is found in the food item. The Total Carbohydrate section is usually subdivided into Fiber and Sugars, finding food which are high in fiber and low in sugars will have much less of an impact of blood glucose levels, lower glycemic index values. Make it a common practice to review all labels so that you can quickly scan to ingredients and listed sugar content to rapidly determine if this is an item worth purchasing.

What Is a Serving?

There is another rather sneaky aspect of nutrition labels. Look carefully at the Nutrition Facts label and you might see that a single serving is calculated not as the 20 ounces in the bottle but as eight ounces. That means that all those calculations about carbohydrate content, sugar content and calories are for only eight ounces, not the whole bottle, or multiply the amounts by 2.5 to calculate the actual amounts in the entire bottle.

Click Here to see some basic examples of serving sizes

Here is what else you should be aware of on a nutrition label:

Serving size (if you have more than one serving, be sure to add in the carbs)
Total carbohydrates expressed in grams
Sugar expressed in grams
Amount of dietary fiber expressed in grams

Reading the labels can be intimidating for some, but with practice you can learn to quickly and accurately collect the information that you need to maintain your lifestyle.