How to read a nutrition label
Every packaged food sold in India carries the same nutrition panel, in the same order. Once you know which column to read and which number is chosen by the manufacturer, most of the panel stops being confusing.
Published
The panel has two columns, and only one is comparable
Under India's labelling regulations a packaged food declares its nutrition both per 100g (or per 100ml) and per serving. The two columns describe the same food, but only the first is fixed. Serving size is chosen by the manufacturer, so two biscuit packs sitting next to each other can quote a serving of three biscuits and a serving of two - and the smaller serving will look better on every line of the panel without the biscuit being any different.
This is why the per-100g column is the one to compare on, and it is the column Filtizy scores. It is the only figure two products are guaranteed to be stating on the same basis.
The per-serving column is still worth reading - it tells you what you are likely to actually eat. Use per-100g to compare products, and per-serving to understand a portion.
What each line means
| Line on the panel | What it is |
|---|---|
| Energy (kcal) | Total energy in the food. Says nothing about where the energy came from. |
| Protein | Grams of protein. |
| Carbohydrate | All carbohydrate, including the sugars listed beneath it. |
| – of which total sugars | Every sugar present, whether it came from an ingredient or was added. |
| – of which added sugars | Only sugar put in during manufacturing. The line that most changes how a product reads. |
| Total fat | All fat, including the saturated and trans lines beneath it. |
| – of which saturated fat | The saturated share, which published front-of-pack guidance singles out. |
| – of which trans fat | Industrially produced trans fat, now tightly limited in India. |
| Sodium / salt | Declared as sodium in India. Salt figures are roughly 2.5× the sodium figure. |
Indented lines are always a subset of the line above, never an addition to it. Total sugars are already inside the carbohydrate figure; added sugars are already inside total sugars. Reading them as separate quantities and adding them up is the most common way to misread a panel.
%RDA, and what it is measured against
Alongside the per-serving column, labels show each nutrient as a percentage of a reference daily intake. That reference is a standardised adult diet - in India, built around 2,000 kcal a day - not a calculation for you. It is useful for comparing how much of a day's reference a serving represents, and not useful as a personal target.
The percentages are also per serving, which means they inherit the serving-size problem above. A pack that declares a small serving reports small percentages.
A practical order to read it in
- Check the serving size first, so you know what the second column is describing.
- Move to the per-100g column for anything you intend to compare.
- Read added sugars before total sugars - it separates fruit and dairy sugars from sugar that was put in.
- Read saturated fat rather than total fat if you only have time for one fat line.
- Convert sodium to salt if that is easier to reason about: multiply by about 2.5.
- Then read the ingredient list, which tells you things the panel cannot.
See it on real products
Every product page shows the same figures broken out, with the factor scores they produced.