Nutrition labelling awareness and education messages

Most packaged foods include nutrition information to help you understand what’s in your food and make informed choices.

• On the front of the package, you may find a magnifying glass symbol telling you that the food is high in saturated fat, sugars, sodium, or any combination of these nutrients.
• On the side or back of the package, you will find a nutrition facts table and a list of ingredients. The nutrition facts table tells you the amount of specific nutrients in the food. The list of ingredients tells you what the food is made of.
• Together, these three mandatory labelling components give you information about what’s in a packaged food, so you can compare similar foods and make informed food choices.

The front-of-package magnifying glass symbol can help you see at a glance whether a food is high in saturated fat, sugars, or sodium.

• You can use the magnifying glass symbol as a tool to quickly see if the food is high in saturated fat, sugars, or sodium.
• When there is no symbol, or when you want more details, turn the package and look at the nutrition facts table and list of ingredients to learn more about what’s in the food product.

The nutrition facts table on the back or side of the package gives you information about the nutrient content of the packaged food.

• The nutrition facts table shows the number of calories and amounts of 12 nutrients, based on the serving size listed at the top of the table.
• Serving sizes make it easy to compare the nutrient content of similar foods. They are not meant to tell you how much to eat.

The % daily value in the nutrition facts table helps you understand whether the serving size contains a little or a lot of a certain nutrient. 

• The % daily value is a quick reference to tell you if the serving size contains a little or a lot of the nutrients in the nutrition facts table. 5% daily value or less is a little and 15% daily value or more is a lot. 
• You can also use the % daily value to compare similar food products.

The list of ingredients tells you what the food is made of or from.

• Most packaged foods in Canada with more than one ingredient must have a list of ingredients.
• Ingredients are listed in order by weight in the food. This means that the ingredient present in the greatest quantity is listed first.
• Sugars-based ingredients are grouped together after the word ‘Sugars’ in the list of ingredients.  This grouping helps you see if sugars were added, and what their source is.

Learn more at canada.ca/nutrition-labelling.