🎙️ Raising Healthy Habits - How to Read Nutrition Labels

When you’re standing in the grocery store holding a package and trying to decide if it’s a good choice for your family - nutrition labels can feel overwhelming.
Too many confusing words, numbers, percentages that don’t really make sense without context.

If you’ve ever thought, “I don’t even know what matters on this label anymore,” you’re definitely not alone.

And honestly — part of me feels like they don’t make labels easy to understand on purpose. Between tiny print, vague claims, and a lot of marketing language, it’s no wonder so many people either overthink labels… or completely ignore them and just buy the food anyway.

Today’s episode is not to turn you into a label-analyzing expert, and definitely not to make food feel stressful — but to give you a simple, grounded way to use nutrition labels as a tool, not a rule.

Hello, I’m Maggie Rich, a Certified Functional Nutritionist and founder of Healthy Habits Santa Cruz, and this is Raising Healthy Habits — a podcast series that supports parents as they raise confident, curious, and well-nourished kids from the inside out.

Ignore the Front — Flip the Package Over

Let’s start with the front of the package, because this alone can change how you shop.

Claims like:
“Low-fat”
“All natural”
“Made with whole grains”

…are all marketing tools.

They’re designed to catch your eye — not tell the full story. And I hope after listening to this episode, you’ll know exactly what to look for next time you pick up a piece of packaged food and flip it over.

Once you get in the habit of flipping the package over, the next question becomes — why does this food even need a label in the first place?

Why Some Foods Have Labels — and Others Don’t

I’m going to state the obvious, but it’s important.

Whole foods — fruits, vegetables, eggs, beans, meat — don’t require nutrition labels because they’re single-ingredient foods.
Nothing has been added. Nothing has been altered. There’s nothing to decode.

Packaged foods, on the other hand, do require nutrition labels because ingredients have been added, removed, or changed.

They exist to help us navigate packaged foods — which most people are realistically using. 

Where to Look First: Ingredients Over Everything Else

If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s this:

You don’t need to read every label perfectly — you just need to understand what you’re looking at. I’m hoping after this episode, you’ll feel more confident in doing exactly that.

👉 First, I recommend starting with the ingredients list. 

Ingredients are listed in order of quantity — meaning the first ingredient makes up the largest portion of the food.

As a general guideline:
-Shorter ingredient lists are usually a good sign
-Ingredients you can read and recognize are a good sign
-And around five ingredients or fewer is often a good sign

This isn’t a hard rule.
It’s just the simplest, least overwhelming place to start when you flip over a package.

Once you’ve looked at the ingredients, the next thing I want parents thinking about is how this food actually fits into a meal.

Fat, Fiber & Protein — In the Context of a Meal

Now let’s talk about something I teach throughout this entire series:
fat, fiber, and protein.

This part matters, so I want to be really clear.

A single packaged food is not necessarily going to contain all three.
But every satisfying meal or snack should.

So instead of asking,
“Does this food have everything?”
a better question is:
“What does this food bring to the meal?”

Maybe it provides fiber.
Maybe it provides fat.
Or maybe it provides protein.

And then you build the rest of the meal or snack around it.

Rather than counting grams, I encourage parents to focus on structure.
When meals consistently include fat, fiber, and protein — even if they come from different foods — kids naturally land in the ranges their bodies need.

I go deeper into this in Episode 3: Every Meal Needs These 3, where we talk about why:
Fat supports stable energy and brain health
Fiber supports digestion and blood sugar balance
Protein supports growth, focus, and fullness

Nutrition labels help you see how a packaged food fits into that bigger picture.

A Note on Fats — What to Look for on the Label

Since this episode comes after Episode 5: The Truth About Fats, I want to make sure you know how to actually translate that information when you’re standing in the grocery store.

When you look at a nutrition label, the grams of fat aren’t usually the most important part.
What matters more is where that fat is coming from.

You’ll see “total fat” listed on the nutrition facts panel, and that tells you whether fat is present at all. But the real information lives in the ingredients list.

So instead of asking,
“Is this high-fat or low-fat?”
try asking:
“What kind of fat is being used here?”

When you scan the ingredients, look for fats you recognize from whole foods — things like olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, nuts, or seeds.

If you see vague terms like “vegetable oil,” or refined seed oils listed early, that’s a sign the food is more processed. That doesn’t mean it’s off-limits — it just helps you understand how this food fits into a meal, and whether you might want to balance it with more supportive fats elsewhere.

This is also why “low-fat” or “fat-free” labels can be misleading. When fat is removed, something else usually has to be added to make the food taste good — often sugar or starch — which is why flipping the package over matters so much.

If you want a deeper dive into why fat matters so much for kids’ brains and energy, that’s what Episode 5: The Truth About Fats is there for. Today is about learning how to spot it on a label.

Sugar: Context Matters More Than Numbers

Sugar is one of the most confusing — and emotionally charged — parts of nutrition labels.

Here’s the key distinction:
Total sugar includes naturally occurring sugar, like what’s found in fruit or dairy
Added sugar is sugar that’s been added during processing

Naturally occurring sugars come packaged with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and sometimes fat or protein — which helps slow absorption.
Added sugars usually don’t.

Think about the difference between an orange and cane sugar.
An orange contains natural fruit sugar — called fructose — plus fiber, vitamin C, and antioxidants. Cane sugar is basically just sugar.

This is why going back to the ingredients list matters so much — it helps you understand where that sugar is actually coming from.

Ideally, lower added sugar is what we’re aiming for — but perfection isn’t realistic, and it’s not necessary.

Here’s a helpful visual:
One sugar cube equals about 4 grams of sugar.

So when you’re looking at added sugar on a label — especially alongside serving size — it can help to picture what that actually looks like.

This is personally why I tend to buy low to zero sugar versions of packaged foods (like greek yogurt) and then sweeten things myself if I want to — it gives me more control and I also can use better options like stevia and vanilla flavors.

I’ll be diving much deeper into sugar, snacks, and energy crashes in a future episode — because there’s a lot more nuance here than labels alone can show.

How This Looks in Real Life

You don’t need to analyze every label.
Focus on foods you buy regularly, and maybe improve them for better swaps over time.

And remember — packaged foods don’t need to exist in isolation.

Pair them with whole foods:

• Crackers with hummus and veggies

• Yogurt with fruit and nuts

• A bar with a protein or fat source

Smart meals — not individual foods — are where nourishment happens.

Bringing It Back to Whole Foods

Whole foods are the foundation because they:
Don’t require labels
Support the body naturally
Teach kids what food actually looks like

Nutrition labels are simply a tool — one that helps you make informed choices when packaged foods are part of real life.

Awareness builds confidence.
Not fear.

Quick Recap

Before we wrap up, I want to quickly recap what actually matters when you’re reading a nutrition label — because this doesn’t need to be complicated.

When you pick up a packaged food:

• Flip the package over — the front is marketing

• Start with the ingredients list — shorter and recognizable is a good sign

• Think fat, fiber, and protein in the context of a meal, not just one food

• Be aware of added sugar (and its source)

• And remember — whole foods don’t need labels, which is why they’re always a great foundation

If you can keep those things in mind, you’re doing more than most.

Closing + Curriculum Vision

Before we wrap up, I want to share a little more about the bigger picture behind this podcast.

Alongside my work with families, I’m currently developing a licensed nutrition education curriculum for elementary schools, focused on building food literacy, body awareness, and lifelong healthy habits in an age-appropriate way.

The long-term vision is for this curriculum to grow with students — expanding into middle school and high school — so nutrition education evolves as kids do.

If you’re a parent, educator, or school administrator and you’d like your school to be considered for future curriculum partnerships or pilot programs, you can learn more and get in touch at healthyhabitssc.com.

This work is about prevention, education, and giving kids the tools to care for their bodies with confidence — starting early.

In the next episode, we’ll talk about immunity boosters — and how daily habits and food patterns support kids’ immune systems far beyond supplements.

Again, I’m Maggie Rich, a Certified Functional Nutritionist. Thank you for being here, and thank you for supporting the next generation of healthy habits.