Discover the incredible health benefits of raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries - nature’s nutrient-rich gems. Get their nutrition facts, creative usage ideas, and two recipes that inspire you to make berries a regular diet.

Wrapping up this Nutrition Facts series, it covers all the information at your fingertips on most of your foods. This entry covers those percentages on the right side of the Nutrition Facts panel, how this may apply to you, and how you can use it even if those numbers aren't in line with your specific needs.

Continuing with part 3 of this series on the Nutrition Facts label addresses the required vitamins and minerals: vitamin D, sodium, iron, calcium, and potassium. Why are these nutrients the ones listed? What are the reference amounts are for them?

Continuing with part 2 of this series on the Nutrition Facts label covers the macronutrients: fat, carbohydrates, and protein. I also address the sub-categories of fat including saturated fat and trans-fat, cholesterol, and the sub-categories of carbohydrates including the newest addition to the Nutrition Facts - added sugars.

See why those numbers don’t always add up and why protein seems like an afterthought. It isn’t

As I showed in Part 1 of Deconstructing Food Labels, one of several required information on the food label is the Nutrition Facts panel.

This required piece of information in the iconic black and white Arial font was required since May 1994, with a minor update that trans-fat be listed on labels by January 1, 2006.

Over the next several years, recommended tweaks and refinements to that label brought forth a "new and improved" label that was required starting January 1, 2020, with some leeway of another year for smaller companies for compliance by January 1, 2021.

While the Nutrition Facts panel is an excellent source of information, people don't always know what to pay attention to or how it applies to them. Others find it confusing or misinterpret the information on there.

If you have been to the back of the grocery store lately, you surely have seen the explosion of dairy alternatives alongside the dairy options.

However, something that many people don’t realize is that these are not healthier options. They are not nutritionally equivalent, and most are nothing more than flavored sugar water with thickeners, added fat, sugar, salt, and vitamins in mineral blends to make it close to milk. And protein is virtually non-existent in many of these.

While many of these are called “milk,” let’s clarify that milk is a nutrient-rich liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. And most people know that nuts, legumes, and hemp do not fall into the category of mammals.