Following the recommended 2000 calorie intake.

starpoweractivate wrote: »

Hi all,
Nutrition labels are designed at a 2000 calorie intake. Does anyone have any insight to how the nutrition changes if you consume more or less than 2000? I've always wondered about that. Why do the labels need to specify based on 2000 calories unless the nutritional info changes depending on you calorie intake. Just thought I would pose this topic out to the forums to see what people have to say on it. Thanks!

I'm going to say that that might not be the question you really want to ask.

Some (many/most) nutrients have recommended intakes based on bodyweight/gender/age/etc. In most cases, you'd probably use your healthy goal weight as a basis, rather than a possible currently seriously over- or under-weight bodyweight. The labels use a calorie level just to give people a general idea of whether the food is a good source of particular nutrients or not, compared to other foods. It's not so much intended as a way for you to calculate your needs or track your intake.

So, there are a lot of assumptions or generalizations built into those labels with the 2000 calorie basis, since people of many different ages/genders/sizes/etc. could be eating any given calorie level, for lots of different reasons (activity level, weight management goals, etc.). Even for those actually eating the same calories, the nutritional needs could be different.

If you want to give more attention to your nutrition, it would be a good idea to figure out sensible nutrient recommendations for your very own personal body. One possible source of mainstream recommendations is the USDA calculator, where you can put in your personal characteristics, and get a tailored recommendation:

https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dri-calculator/

(You may or may not agree with those recommendations. For example, recent research I've read leads me to eat more protein than that calculator recommends, since I'm older, quite athletically active, vegetarian, and sometimes in a calorie deficit.)

Then, if you want to understand how a particular nutrient on a food label contributes to your nutrition, you can compare your personal need for the nutrient to the amount in a standard serving of the food (or, by doing a little arithmetic, your personal serving that may be a different amount than the standard serving).

Some of the ingredients have only a %DV on the label, rather than a number of grams plus a percentage. Unfortunately, for those, if you really care, you'd have to figure out what USDA's standard for calculating those percentages is. There's some more information about that here:

https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-education-resources-and-materials/how-understand-and-use-nutrition-facts-label

That link also has some info about what the label values are intended to be useful for.