Should I read per 100 g or per serving?

Per 100 g for comparing products, per serving for what you will actually eat. Serving sizes are chosen by manufacturers and are often smaller than a realistic portion.

Are low-fat products better?

Usually not. Removing fat commonly means adding sugar or starch, so check the full macro panel rather than the front-of-pack claim.

Do label calories have to be exact?

No. Most regulations allow a tolerance of around 20%, which is another reason to judge progress by weekly trends rather than single days.

← Notes

Practical·5 min read·March 8, 2025·By The Procaaf Team

Reading Nutrition Labels Without Getting Fooled

Serving sizes lie by omission, 'per 100g' is your friend, and 'low fat' usually means 'more sugar.' A short field guide to seeing through the label.

A grocery aisle with packaged foods lined on the shelves.

Food packaging is designed to sell, not to inform. Once you know the tricks manufacturers repeat, you stop being their target. Every supermarket walk becomes a quick pattern-match instead of a marketing gauntlet.

Trick one: the tiny serving size

A bag of chips lists 150 calories per serving. The bag contains 3.5 servings. Nobody eats 3.5 servings — they eat the bag. Always multiply by the real amount you will actually eat.

The same trick shows up in ice cream (a 'serving' of half a cup), granola (a quarter cup), and sodas (many bottles are actually 2.5 servings). Read the number, then read the servings-per-container line right above it.

Trick two: per-serving vs per-100g

The only fair way to compare two products is per 100 grams. Serving sizes vary between brands on purpose; grams do not. Every food in Procaaf is stored per 100 g exactly because of this.

When two cereals look similar and one is 'lower sugar,' check per 100 g. Nine times out of ten they are within a gram of each other and the difference is marketing.

Trick three: fat-free means sugar-full

Fat carries flavor. Remove it and something else has to replace it — almost always sugar, starch, or salt. A full-fat plain yogurt is usually a better food than its fat-free flavored cousin, and it will keep you full longer.

The same applies to 'low-calorie' salad dressings (loaded with sugar) and 'low-sodium' processed meats (loaded with potassium salts that some people react poorly to).

Trick four: the ingredient list order

Ingredients are listed by weight, heaviest first. If sugar (or any of its aliases — cane syrup, dextrose, agave, fruit juice concentrate) shows up in the first three ingredients, the food is essentially a dessert regardless of what the front of the package says.

A quick rule: if you cannot pronounce more than half the ingredients, or if the list is longer than the label on your shampoo bottle, treat it as a treat, not a staple.

Frequently asked questions

Should I read per 100 g or per serving?: Per 100 g for comparing products, per serving for what you will actually eat. Serving sizes are chosen by manufacturers and are often smaller than a realistic portion.
Are low-fat products better?: Usually not. Removing fat commonly means adding sugar or starch, so check the full macro panel rather than the front-of-pack claim.
Do label calories have to be exact?: No. Most regulations allow a tolerance of around 20%, which is another reason to judge progress by weekly trends rather than single days.

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