“Should I eat this?”

Your quick guide to food labels

By Staff reporters

Should you eat this? Often, or just occasionally? What does the label say? Nutrition labels don’t make food decisions as simple as we’d like. How you evaluate a food product depends on various factors, including your health goals. Here’s one quick way that you can quickly estimate whether or not a product is reasonably healthy using just three pieces of information from the label: 

• #1 Grams of fiber
• #2 Grams of protein
• #3 Grams of sugar

The chart below may look complicated at first glance, but stay with us. Once you get this, you can do it in your head in just a few moments. For this visual demo, we compared three varieties of Kind® bar, a snack you may be counting on to fortify you between classes. Kind® bars have rapidly come to dominate the nutrition bar scene: Six of the top 10 fastest-selling nutrition bars are Kind® bars, according to data from Nielsen, the market research company. Not all flavors are created equal. Different varieties of the same product can vary widely in nutritional composition, so it’s worth checking each one.

Does one serving contain at least 3 grams of fiber

Oats & Honey Toasted Coconut (Healthy Grains)® 2.5g fiber Enjoy occasionally and seek out healthier options.

Almond & Apricot® 6g fiber Good start. Next question.

Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt® 7g fiber Good start. Next question.

Add the number of grams of protein to the number of grams of fiber. Then subtract the number of grams of sugar.

If you end up with a positive number (above zero), the food product meets a basic standard of nutritional value. If your number runs negative (below zero), consider eating something else.

Almond & Apricot® 6 + 3 – 10 = -1 Enjoy occasionally and seek out healthier options.

Dark Chocolate Nuts & Sea Salt® 7 + 6 – 5 = +8 Yay! Eat it.

+ Wellness Campaign tools & resources

This strategy for reading food labels is known as the Altman Rule. It is named for Wayne Altman, MD, a family physician practicing in Arlington, Massachusetts, and professor of family medicine and director of medical student education in the Department of Family Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston. Dr. Altman and Kerri Hawkins, MS, RD, LDN, co-created WellnessCampaign.org to help people make permanent, positive changes in their health.