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Checking food labels as a parent

How do I check what is in the food I buy for my kids?

The short answer

Turn the pack over and read the first three ingredients, because those are usually most of what is in it by weight. On products marketed to children the front of the pack is where the health claims are and the back is where the answer is. Two thirds of the calories eaten by American children and teenagers now come from ultra-processed food, measured across twenty years of national survey data, so the useful question at the shelf is usually the processing one rather than the sugar one.

Optimally gives one score out of 100 and the reasons behind it, which is about as long as a supermarket aisle allows.

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The figure worth carrying around

A JAMA analysis of US national survey data from 1999 to 2018 found that the share of calories from ultra-processed food among 2 to 19 year olds rose from 61.4% to 67.0%.

That is a measurement of intake rather than of harm, and it is worth stating plainly as such. What it tells you is where the volume is. A change applied to two thirds of what a child eats has more room to matter than one applied to the margins.

What front-of-pack claims are allowed to mean

The claims that appear most on children’s food are the ones with the least legal content behind them. "Natural" has never been formally defined by the US Food and Drug Administration. "No artificial colours" says nothing about the sweeteners, the emulsifiers or the processing.

The regulated claims are the nutrition ones, and even those are chosen by the manufacturer from whichever number flatters the product. A cereal can be high in fibre and still be group 4.

A workable habit in a supermarket

  • Read the first three ingredients. They are usually the bulk of the product.
  • Look for one marker of ultra-processing rather than trying to assess everything: a flavouring, an emulsifier, a colour, a non-sugar sweetener, a protein isolate.
  • Treat the front of the pack as advertising, because that is what it is.
  • Compare within a shelf rather than in the abstract. The useful question is which of these four cereals, not whether cereal is good.

On fear, and where this site stops

The evidence on ultra-processed food is strong enough that it does not need inflating, and most of it is observational, which means association rather than proof. One randomised trial in twenty adults is the piece that isolates cause, and it measured calorie intake and weight over two weeks on each diet, not childhood outcomes over decades.

Nothing here is medical advice, and a score on a phone is not a judgement about a meal, a household or a parent. Allergen information in particular should always be read from the physical packaging, because only the label in your hand is authoritative.

Last reviewed 14 September 2026.