Nutrition labels are a familiar part of grocery shopping, but shoppers do not all use them in the same way. In 2019, 87% of U.S. adults said they had ever looked at the Nutrition Facts label, while 79% regularly used it when deciding whether to buy a food product in the 2017–March 2020 period. The statistics below show what shoppers check, how labels influence decisions, and where usage differs by demographic and geographic group.
Contents
- How common is nutrition label use?
- Which nutrients and fields do shoppers check?
- How labels shape shopping decisions
- What shoppers understand about labels
- Differences by sex, race, and education
- Income, geography, and dietary associations
How common is nutrition label use?
The 2019 Food Safety and Nutrition Survey (FSANS) found that 87% of U.S. adults had ever looked at the Nutrition Facts label on food packages. Looking at a label at least once is different from making it a regular shopping habit. When buying a food product for the first time, 20% said they always used the label, 29% used it most of the time, and 27% used it sometimes. Another 8% used it rarely, while 2% never used it.
The USDA report Who Regularly Uses the Nutrition Facts Label? Exploring Demographic, Socioeconomic, and Geographic Differences measured regular use across multiple NHANES periods. It reported that 62% of U.S. adults regularly used the Nutrition Facts panel when buying food in 2005–06. The share was 80% in 2009–10 and 79% in 2017–March 2020. These figures come from different measurement periods and should be read as survey estimates for those periods, not as a continuous annual series.
| Measurement period | Regular Nutrition Facts panel use |
|---|---|
| 2005–06 | 62% |
| 2009–10 | 80% |
| 2017–March 2020 | 79% |
Together, the measures describe a broad but varied habit: many adults have checked a label, fewer say they use it every time they first buy a product, and roughly four in five were classified as regular users in the USDA analysis for 2017–March 2020.
Which nutrients and fields do shoppers check?
Among U.S. adults who answered the FDA label question in 2019, calories were the most commonly reported item to look for. Sixty percent usually looked for calories. Total sugars followed at 52%, while sodium was checked by 49% and serving size by 48%.
Other label fields were also important, though less frequently selected. Forty-three percent usually looked for total fat. Thirty-nine percent looked for the number of servings, and the same share looked for protein. Added sugars were checked by 34%, total carbohydrate by 33%, saturated fat by 30%, and cholesterol by 30%. Dietary fiber was selected by 26%.
These results suggest that label use is not limited to a single question such as “How many calories are in this?” Calories led the list, but sugars, sodium, serving size, fat, protein, and other fields were also part of shoppers’ routines. The measure asked what adults usually looked for, so the percentages describe reported attention to individual fields rather than mutually exclusive shopper types. A person could look for several nutrients on the same package.
For meal planning, the distinction between serving size and number of servings is especially relevant to interpreting a package. In 2019, 48% usually looked for serving size and 39% usually looked for the number of servings. The two fields were reported separately in the 2019 FSANS, so they represent separate label-checking behaviors.
How labels shape shopping decisions
Nutrition Facts labels can support several different decisions in the aisle. In 2019, 40% of U.S. adults often used labels to compare different food items, and another 33% sometimes used them for that purpose. Comparison was therefore a common use, whether shoppers were choosing between brands, package types, or different foods.
Brand choice was another reported use. Thirty-three percent often used Nutrition Facts labels to decide which brand of a food item to buy, while 34% sometimes did so. The label was not only a source of nutrition information; for many shoppers it was part of a direct product comparison.
Labels also informed portions for households. Twenty percent often used them to figure out how much of a food product they or their family should eat, and 33% sometimes used them that way. This is a practical meal-planning use because the label can be consulted at the point of purchase while deciding how a product may fit into meals or snacks.
Forty-five percent often used Nutrition Facts labels to get a general idea of a food’s nutritional content. A smaller, but still substantial, 25% often used labels to check whether advertising or package claims were actually true. The figures come from the 2019 Food Safety and Nutrition Survey and refer to reported uses among U.S. adults.
The pattern is useful for understanding shopping behavior: some people use labels for a broad nutrition snapshot, some compare products, some evaluate brands or package claims, and some use the information to guide household portions. The survey results do not establish that label use caused a particular purchase or eating outcome.
What shoppers understand about labels
Looking at a label does not mean every part of it is interpreted in the same way. The 2019 FSANS asked U.S. adults whether they looked at gram or milligram amounts, percent Daily Value amounts, both, or neither. Nineteen percent looked at gram or milligram amounts, and 16% looked at percent Daily Value amounts. Thirty-three percent looked at both types of amounts. Fourteen percent looked at neither, while 5% did not know which amount type they looked at.
The survey also tested interpretation of a Daily Value example. Sixty-three percent correctly interpreted a 7% Total Fat Daily Value as 7% of the amount they should eat in a day. Fifteen percent said they did not know what that 7% meant. The remaining responses are not described here because the supplied result does not provide a complete breakdown for every answer category.
Another question tested whether adults could classify a food with 25% of the sodium Daily Value per serving. Fifty-seven percent correctly classified it as high in sodium. Twenty-six percent called it medium in sodium, and 8% called it low in sodium. These results show why a shopper’s ability to recognize and interpret label information matters alongside the decision to look at the package.
For a meal-planning routine, the findings support keeping both the amount and the percent Daily Value in view when those fields are relevant. However, the survey percentages describe what adults reported or answered in 2019; they do not measure every shopping situation or every food category.
Differences by sex, race, and education
The USDA’s adjusted analysis for 2017–20 found meaningful differences in regular label use. Men were 13 percentage points less likely than women to regularly use Nutrition Facts labels when deciding which packaged foods to buy. Men were also 17 percentage points less likely to regularly use calorie information, 14 points less likely to use sugars information, 10 points less likely to use sodium information, and 15 points less likely to use serving-size information.
The same analysis found differences by Hispanic origin and race. Hispanic consumers of all races were 6 percentage points more likely than non-Hispanic White consumers to regularly use Nutrition Facts labels. They were 10 points more likely to regularly use sugars information and 10 points more likely to regularly use sodium information. Non-Hispanic Black consumers were 11 percentage points more likely than non-Hispanic White consumers to regularly use sodium information.
Education was associated with regular use as well. Compared with adults who did not complete high school, regular Nutrition Facts label use was 4 percentage points higher among high-school graduates, 10 points higher among adults with some college, and 21 points higher among adults with at least four years of college. These are adjusted comparisons reported by USDA for 2017–20, not claims that education alone caused the differences.
Income, geography, and dietary associations
The USDA analysis also examined the family poverty-to-income ratio. A one-unit increase in that ratio was associated with nearly a 2-percentage-point increase in regular Nutrition Facts label use. The same one-unit increase was associated with a 2.4-percentage-point increase in regular calorie-information use, a 1.2-percentage-point increase in regular sugars-information use, and a 2.1-percentage-point increase in regular sodium-information use.
Geography showed another difference. Adults in nonmetropolitan areas were 9 percentage points less likely than adults in large metropolitan areas to regularly use Nutrition Facts labels. They were 8 percentage points less likely to regularly use calorie information and 10 percentage points less likely to regularly use sodium information. These comparisons describe area categories used in the USDA analysis for 2017–20.
The report also presented associations between regular label use and selected dietary or spending measures across the listed survey periods. Regular Nutrition Facts label users had an estimated 191 fewer calories of daily energy intake than nonregular users. They had an estimated 112 milligrams less daily sodium intake. Regular users also spent about $15 less per month on food prepared away from home than nonregular users. The calorie and sodium estimates cover 2005–06, 2007–08, 2009–10, and 2017–20; the away-from-home food spending estimate covers 2007–08, 2009–10, and 2017–20.
These are reported associations and estimated differences between regular and nonregular users. They do not show that reading a label directly produced the lower intake or spending. They do show how nutrition label use, shopping decisions, and meal-planning behavior can appear together in national survey data.