Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

52 ALICE CALLAHAN, PHD, HEATHER LEONARD, MED, RDN, AND TAMBERLY POWELL, MS, RDN
that will be more or less valuable in meeting your nutritional goals. For example, if you’re
trying to watch your intake of added sugar or saturated fat, or you’re trying to incorporate
more dietary sources of calcium and vitamin D, the Nutrition Facts panel is a valuable tool.
There are 4 main parts of a Nutrition Facts panel, shown in the figure below. The colors are
added to highlight different sections of a label; Nutrition Facts are printed in black and white.
Figure 1.13. The four main sections of a Nutrition Facts label, highlighted in color.
1. Serving size information
It’s fitting that serving size information is first on the Nutrition Facts panel, because all of
the information that follows is based on it. The serving size of the food is the amount
that is customarily eaten at one time, and all of the nutrition information on the label
is based on one serving of the food. This section of the label also states the number of
servings per container. 1
It’s important to note that you might not always eat one serving of a food; sometimes
you might eat half of a serving, and sometimes you might eat two or more servings in one
sitting. For example, if the label above is for a breakfast cereal, you might easily consume 1