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Eating healthy is the best idea, but what happens when you can’t decipher food labels well enough to know if you are making the best choice.

Check out the most common food ingredients to find out what good for you, what’s not and what it all means.

The information is so important when making nutrition decisions, yet nutrition fact labels can be difficult to decipher.

First, knowing the serving size is key.

It is easy to assume that a package is one serving, however, often there are 3 or more servings per package in foods like chips, cookies and beverages.

At first glance what looks like 150 calories can easily became 3 times as much.

Read the following guide for an explanation of nutrition fact terms and what they mean and how you can make wise food decisions.

We are all getting the message about foods that we shouldn’t eat but what exactly should we be eating?

The FDA is trying to simplify the answer to that question by illustrating food labels making them easier to read and follow.

Calorie counts are popping up on menus of chain restaurants across the country and the longstanding food pyramid was toppled this year by the U.S. government in favor of a plate that gives a picture of what a healthy daily diet looks like.

The struggle to redesign the labels on every box, can and carton has been in the works since 2003, and some of the changes could be proposed as soon as this year. FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor cautions not to expect a grand overhaul, but the revamped label does mark a shift to create a more useful nutritional snapshot of foods millions of Americans consume every day.