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[quote=Anonymous]I used to teach this in my ESL class for new immigrants!

The nice thing about food labels in the US is that they are entirely standardized. You get a list of ingredients, and then a little chart which tells you the serving size of one portion, how many portions in the package, and then the nutritional content of one portion.

Here's what I look for typically when I'm grocery shopping:
On ingredients--the ingredients are listed in the order of how much of each is in the food. So if the number one ingredient listed is sugar or high fructose corn syrup, I am cautious. Similarly if something seems out of place, like sugar as the number 3 ingredient on a granola bar, instead of nuts or seeds or whatever, I am cautious.

On the nutrition label, I look for high sodium content, high fat (both bad!), and high fiber (good!!). The label lists the percentage of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) in one serving of the food. I try to imagine the food as a percentage of the amount of food I'll eat in a day.

So for example, let's say I'm choosing between two brands of sausage. I plan to make sausage and pasta for dinner, so I guesstimate that dinner is about 40% of our daily calorie intake, and the sausage is about a third of dinner--so call it 15% of the daily calorie intake.

If one serving of the sausage has 50% of the daily sodium and 60% of the daily fat allowance, it's not a great choice. If it has 30% of the fat and 25% of the sodium, much better, especially if it's the major source of both of these things in the meal I'm making. [/quote]

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