How to read a food label in 20 seconds
Last updated August 2026
Packaging is marketing; the label is the truth. Four checks are enough to judge almost any packaged product on a supermarket shelf.
1. Look at per 100 g, not per serving
Manufacturers choose the serving size, and they choose it small. Per 100 g is the only column that lets you compare two products fairly. Then check how many servings are actually in the pack — a "200 kcal" snack bag is often 2.5 servings.
2. Convert sugar to teaspoons
Divide grams of sugar by 4 to get teaspoons. A 500 ml bottled drink with 53 g of sugar is thirteen teaspoons. The WHO free-sugar limit is about 25 g — six teaspoons — for a whole day.
Low sugar
Under 5 g per 100 g
Medium
5–22.5 g per 100 g
High
Over 22.5 g per 100 g
3. Check sodium, not just salt
Sodium × 2.5 = salt. The daily ceiling is 2,000 mg of sodium (5 g of salt), and instant noodles, sauces and processed meat get you there fast — one instant noodle pack with its full seasoning sachet is often 1,500–1,900 mg.
4. Read the first three ingredients
Ingredients are listed by weight. If sugar, syrup, or a refined flour is in the first three, the product is mostly that. Watch for sugar wearing a costume: glucose syrup, maltose, dextrose, fruit juice concentrate, honey, brown sugar — splitting sugar into several names pushes each one further down the list.
"No added sugar", "natural" and "multigrain" are unregulated marketing in most cases. "Wholegrain as first ingredient" is a real signal.
Let the app do it
Hungryy's barcode mode reads the printed label values directly for packaged food, so the numbers you save are the manufacturer's own — not an AI estimate. Use barcode for anything in a wrapper, and photo scanning for cooked food.