5-10-20 Rule of Nutrition

Do you know how to read a nutrition label? You know that label on the side of the box that tells you how many fat grams and calories are in the food you're about to consume. If you're like me you'll check the fat grams and cringe at anything over about 5 or 6 grams. When you look at the calorie count you may think that anything over 200 calories is high, but really there's more to it than that.

I took a Nutrition class a little over a year ago and one of the best things I learned was how to read a nutrition label and what all that "extra" stuff on the label meant. The first thing I learned was the rule of 5-10-20. If the daily value percentage (DV%) is listed as 5% or less then that food item is low in that nutrient. If the DV% is 10% it provides a moderate amount of that nutrient. If it is 20% or higher then it provides a high amount of that nutrient. The daily value of each nutrient is based on a 2000 calorie diet.

What I like about the 5-10-20 rule is that I can quickly see whether or not a particular food is healthy or not. Instead of trying to figure out if 5 grams of fat is high, or if 300 grams of sodium is high or low, I can just look at the percentages and see at a glance what the true nutritional value is for that food.

For instance, if you look at the nutritional label above you can quickly see that this food ( I don't know what it is since I just found the image online) is definitely not healthy! It only has 280 calories, but it has many bad nutrients on the high side -- total fat is 20%, saturated fat 25%, and sodium 28%. The good nutrients -- Vitamin A, Vitamin C, and Iron are all on the low side since they are under 5%. It looks calcium is a little better with 15%. So by using the 5-10-20 rule you can easily see how healthy this food item is, or isn't!

Try it for yourself, it's kind of fun! Look at some containers in your cupboards and see if the 5-10-20 rules works for you. I'd love to hear if it works for you too.

For more info on reading nutrition labels check out the FDA's site: http://www.fda.gov/food/labelingnutrition/consumerinformation/ucm078889.htm