A carton of soy milk from the little grocery at the mouth of your alley. You have drunk it a hundred times, but you have probably never read the small table printed on its side.
Try reading it once. Some lines are bold, some are indented, there are two columns of numbers. Sometimes there is even a percentage column.
It looks messy, but every table follows a fairly similar template. Learn the template and you can read any table.
In this article
Every table looks alike, and that is on purpose
Nutrition tables do not look alike by accident. The international food standards body Codex Alimentarius has shared guidelines on nutrition labeling. Many countries, Vietnam included, build their own rules on that framework.
So the order of the lines is quite familiar. Below is a sample table we made up for illustration. It does not belong to any product:
| Nutrition information | Per 100ml | Per carton (200ml) |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 55 kcal (230 kJ) | 110 kcal (460 kJ) |
| Protein | 3.0g | 6.0g |
| Fat | 1.8g | 3.6g |
| of which saturated fat | 0.3g | 0.6g |
| Carbohydrate | 6.5g | 13g |
| of which sugars | 5.5g | 11g |
| Fiber | 0.5g | 1g |
| Sodium | 40mg | 80mg |
Read from the top: energy first, then the three macros (protein, fat, carbs), and finally the nutrients measured in milligrams, like sodium.
An indented line is the "child" of the line above
Notice the two lines that start with "of which". They are indented, or printed smaller.
That is the table's way of saying: this line sits inside the line above.
- 5.5g of sugars is part of the 6.5g of carbs. Not 6.5g of carbs plus another 5.5g of sugars.
- 0.3g of saturated fat is part of the 1.8g of fat.
A common mistake is to add these two lines together and think the food holds more than it really does.
The child-to-parent ratio is interesting too. In the example, sugars make up most of the carbs. That means the carbs in this carton are mostly sweetness, not starch. In soy milk, those sugars are usually a mix of added sugar and natural sugars from the beans.
Two columns, two different stories
The first column is for 100ml. The second is for the whole 200ml carton.
The 100ml column is for comparing. This carton against that one, one brand against another: put the two 100ml columns side by side.
The per-carton column tells you how much you actually drink. Finish the carton and you get 110 kcal and 11g of sugars, not 55 kcal.
Some products only show a "per serving" column, for example "serving 30g, 5 servings per pack". Then you have to multiply it yourself. Serving sizes hide so many traps that we wrote a whole article on them: serving size and "per 100g".
Zero does not always mean nothing
Here is the fun fact that surprises many people.
In the United States, labeling rules allow "0g" if a nutrient is under 0.5g per serving. Many other countries have similar rounding rules.
That sounds reasonable, since 0.4g is tiny. But picture a can of non-stick cooking spray. The serving is listed as one spray lasting under a second. Counted that way, fat is almost zero. Spray for three seconds and it is a different story.
So when you see a zero, glance back at the serving size. The more unusually small the serving, the more suspicious the zero.
Rounding explains something else too. Sometimes you add up the calories from protein, fat and carbs yourself and the total does not match the energy line. Usually that is rounding, or ingredients that give fewer calories than usual, such as fiber. The article on what is a calorie shows you how to do the sum yourself.
Lines that may or may not be there
Besides the main lines, some labels add:
- Trans fat: a type of fat worth keeping as low as possible.
- Cholesterol: common on foods made from eggs, meat, butter and dairy.
- Vitamins and minerals: calcium, iron, vitamin D... often on milk and breakfast cereals.
- A percentage column: compared with a whole-day reference amount. We explain it in what is %DV.
A missing line does not mean the food lacks that nutrient. Sometimes the manufacturer simply is not required to list it.
A small tip for reading fast: you do not need to read every line every time. Pick the two or three lines you care about, say protein and sugars, and check only those. Your eyes will adapt very quickly.
Inside the kOBE kitchen
Let us apply the template to one kOBE ingredient pack: Sous Vide Chicken Breast.
Every 100g of cooked meat has 165 kcal, 31g protein, 3.6g fat and 0g starch. Reading with the template: this clearly plays for team protein. Fat is low, and carbs are zero because chicken has no starch to begin with. The chicken breast is only soaked in sea salt before cooking, so there is no added sugar either.
We list numbers per 100g so you can compare easily. The chicken breast comes pre-portioned at 90 to 120g, so you only need to multiply. A 120g pack is about 37g protein and nearly 200 kcal. See Sous Vide Chicken Breast on the Ingredients page.
Frequently asked questions
Are carbohydrates and starch the same thing?
Why do some labels show kJ and others kcal?
If the table does not list sugars, does the food have no sugar?
Keep reading
Sources
- Codex Alimentarius (FAO/WHO). Guidelines on Nutrition Labelling (CXG 2-1985).
- Ministry of Health (Vietnam). Circular 29/2023/TT-BYT guiding the content and presentation of nutrition components and nutritional values on food labels (Thông tư 29/2023/TT-BYT).
- U.S. FDA. 21 CFR 101.9, Nutrition labeling of food (rounding rules).
- U.S. FDA. How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label.
- Further reading: Understanding Nutrition 16th ed., section 2.3.
