Healthy Foods, Healthy Diets

FibonacciMD
21 hours ago
7 min read

Navigating Food Labels, Claims, and Apps to Build a Healthful Eating Pattern

Learn how to navigate food labels, government claims, and apps to choose the best packaged foods for a healthy, whole-food diet.

Culinary Medicine

A healthy diet is based on healthy foods. These are whole or minimally processed foods, such as a fresh tomato, an egg, or a bowl of oatmeal. Most of us want to choose healthy foods, but unless you can spend most of your day preparing meals, you probably also include some packaged processed foods. Determining which packaged foods are the best choices and how to incorporate them into a healthy diet can be a challenge. Are peaches still healthy when they are canned in heavy syrup, or baked into a pie? What about tomatoes in a jar of spaghetti sauce that has added salt and sugar?

What Determines if a Food is Healthy?

While there is no black and white definition, a healthy food is one that helps maximize your intake of essential nutrients while minimizing components that increase your health risks. Whole foods are likely to meet this definition because processing causes the loss of some nutrients and frequently adds sugars, saturated fat, and sodium, which are not considered healthy because excesses of these contribute to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, the chronic diseases that plague our modern world. So, when choosing a healthy food, look for ones that are good sources of essential nutrients and contain limited amounts of added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.

There are also individual considerations when choosing healthy foods. What is healthy for you is impacted by your family history, medical history, and ideological concerns. For example, if your family history puts you at risk for heart disease, you may be particularly focused on your limiting your saturated fat intake. If you are allergic to peanuts, foods that contain them are not healthy for you. If you are concerned about the environmental impact of raising cattle, you won’t choose beef. If you prefer to avoid genetically modified (GM) foods and those containing additives, you will exclude these from your healthy choices.

Finding Healthy Foods

read the labels, read the nutrition and amounts per serving

When sorting out healthy packaged foods, food labels are a good place to start. Most packaged foods are required to provide a Nutrition Facts panel on the back or side of the package. This is helpful if you are looking for information on specific nutrients. For example, if you are trying to limit your sodium intake or increase the calcium in your diet, you can find information about the amounts of these nutrients in the Nutrition Facts. Food packages also include an Ingredient List, which presents the contents of the product in order of their prominence by weight. This information is important if you are trying to limit additives or if you have a food allergy. Despite how helpful food labels are in finding specific nutrients or ingredients, they do not provide the full picture of the healthfulness of a food in a readily accessible format.

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The word “healthy” on the front of a food package provides an easy way to identify it as a good choice. The FDA allows the healthy claim on foods that contribute a significant amount from at least one food group, such as dairy or vegetables, and do not contain too much saturated fat, sodium, or added sugars.[1] For example, a 2/3-cup serving of plain, low-fat yogurt can carry the “healthy” claim because it provides a serving from the dairy group and is low in the nutrients we need to limit. While “healthy” on the package can be helpful, this claim is voluntary, so not all healthy foods will have it.

To make finding healthy foods easier, the FDA is considering adding a simple symbol on the label of products that meet the definition of “healthy.” Similar types of symbols are already used on food labels in many other countries to help identify healthy foods. For example, in Canada, packaged foods have a graphic indicating whether the food is high in saturated fat, added sugars, or sodium.[2] And in the United Kingdom, the amounts of calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt are presented in color-coded boxes.[3] If the box is green, the food is low in a nutrient we should limit. An amber box shows that the food is moderate in a nutrient of concern and red indicates that the food is higher than recommended.[4] So, a food that has all or mostly green boxes on the label is a healthier choice than one with red or amber boxes. This traffic light approach has been shown to improve consumer’s ability to recognize healthy foods, although whether they are effective in promoting healthy eating is less clear.[4]

In addition to government efforts to make food labeling more helpful, there are also several commercial apps available to help consumers identify healthy foods. These apps allow you to scan a product label to see how it rates nutritionally. While different apps consider slightly different aspects of the food, they generally evaluate the amounts of calories, sodium, sugar, and saturated fat the food contains; some also assess the degree of processing, the contributions from different food groups, and the use of additives.[5,6] These are helpful for those who have a smart phone and are willing to scan foods before purchasing or consuming them. Although food scanner apps provide consumers with more information, they have not been shown to improve eating habits.[7,8]

Food Guides for Planning a Healthy Diet

Food labels, the “healthy” claim, and apps can be helpful in determining whether a food is healthy, but they do not tell you how to assemble a healthy diet. For example, fresh tomatoes are a healthy food, but eating only tomatoes would not result in a healthy diet because you would be lacking in nutrients such as protein and vitamin B₁₂ and, most likely, in calories as well. A healthy diet includes the right combinations and proportions of a variety of foods.

Food guides are tools designed to help us choose combinations of foods that make up a nutritionally sound diet. In general, food guides divide foods into food groups and recommend a certain number of servings from each of these groups. For example, to assemble a diet that provides 2200 calories, you would include 2 servings of fruit, 3 of vegetables, 3 of dairy, 7 of grains, and 6 of protein foods. There are a number of food guides that can be used to choose a healthy diet, including the DASH diet, the Mediterranean diet, and MyPlate. And there are apps for these too – a quick internet search will take you there.

Food guides tell you the number of servings from each food group that makes up a healthy dietary pattern, but it is up to you to choose healthy foods from within each group. Brown rice and donuts are both in the grains group, but they are not equivalently healthy choices. This does not mean you can never have a donut. No one food makes or breaks a healthy diet; you can still eat a healthy diet if you choose the donut as an occasional treat. Because no one food provides everything we need, variety is key to a healthy dietary pattern. Aim for a variety of food groups as well as a variety of foods within each group. Balance and moderation are also important; less healthy choices need to be offset by healthier ones, so the overall dietary pattern provides all the nutrients you need and does not increase your health risks.

When perusing your refrigerator, grocery store, or restaurant options you may not always choose the healthiest food, but you can usually find a healthier option. For example, for a serving of dairy and fruit, plain nonfat yogurt topped with fresh strawberries provides a heathy option, but this choice takes some effort to prepare. A container of strawberry yogurt is more convenient but is higher in added sugar. However, the container of yogurt is a healthier choice than strawberry ice cream, which is higher in saturated fat and calories. Likewise, when you are rushing to make dinner, pasta served with sauce that came from a jar and meatballs you bought frozen is an easy meal that provides choices from the protein, grains, and vegetable groups. It may not be as healthy as the same meal made from scratch, but it is a healthier choice than stopping for a fast-food burger and fries. You could make this meal even healthier by using whole-grain or legume pasta and adding some vegetables or a fruit salad; the produce does not have to be fresh; frozen is also a heathy option.

Putting it All Together

A healthy diet is a pattern of eating that provides the energy and nutrients we need in the right proportion to promote health, while limiting nutrients and other substances that increase risks. To assemble a healthy diet, focus on fresh, minimally processed foods and use food labels, the “healthy” claim, and/or apps to find the best choices when selecting packaged foods. While including healthy foods in the right proportions from each of the food groups is ideal, do not panic if you do not always meet this goal. It is your average intake over a period of days or weeks that determines if your overall diet is healthy. With a little planning, you can achieve this with a balance of fresh and processed foods and not spend all your time in the kitchen or break the bank.

References

[1] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A Fresh Take on What “Healthy” Means on Food Packages. Updated February 24, 2025. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/fresh-take-what-healthy-means-food-packages‌

[2] Government of Canada. Nutrition Labelling: Front of Package labelling. Updated September 3, 2025.https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/food-nutrition/nutrition-labelling/front-package.html

[3] NHS. Food Labels. Updated September 16, 2022. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-guidelines-and-food-labels/how-to-read-food-labels/

[4] Kunz S, Haasova S, Rieß J, Florack A. Beyond Healthiness: The Impact of Traffic Light Labels on Taste Expectations and Purchase Intentions. Foods. 2020;9(2):134. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9020134

[5] GoCoCo. GoCoCo Scoring. The science behind how healthy your food is. Gococo.app. Published 2025. Accessed October 19, 2025. https://www.gococo.app/gococo-scoring

[6] Marks Purnode M. Healthy New You: the Yuka app – review. World Cancer Research Fund. Published January 26, 2024. https://www.wcrf.org/about-us/news-and-blogs/healthy-new-you-the-yuka-app-review/‌

[7] Werle COC, Gauthier C, Yamim AP, Bally F. How a food scanner app influences healthy food choice. Appetite. 2024;200:107571-107571. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2024.107571‌

[8] Cornudet C, Laporte M-E, Berger‐Remy F, Parguel B, Richet J-L. When food scanner apps outperform front‐of‐pack nutrition labels: a conditional process model to foster healthier food choices in times of growing distrust. Psychology and Marketing. Published online March 26, 2025. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.22214.