Every packaged food in Canada carries the same black-and-white Nutrition Facts table, in English and French, and most people read exactly one line of it. Calories. That’s fine as far as it goes, but the table holds the answer to most of the questions people ask me about logging food, like why their app says something different, or why a “low fat” yogurt still blew their day.
This is the label line by line, from the point of view of someone who wants to log what they ate accurately. It covers the Nutrition Facts table, the new magnifying-glass symbol on the front of the box, and a few habits that make your numbers line up with reality.
Start with the serving size, not the calories
Every number in the table is for the amount at the very top. “Per 1 cup (55 g)”. “Per 2 cookies (24 g)”. “Per 3/4 cup (175 g)”. The calories, the fat, the sodium are all for that amount and nothing else.
Health Canada’s 2016 label changes made serving sizes more consistent between similar foods and closer to what people actually eat, which is why the top line now shows a household measure and a metric amount together. That helps when you compare two boxes of cereal. It doesn’t mean the serving matches your bowl.
When you log, use the gram figure in brackets. A cup is a guess. Fifty-five grams is a fact. If you pour 80 g of that cereal, you ate 80 ÷ 55 = about 1.45 servings, and every number on the label goes up by the same amount. A food scale makes this a two-second job, and it is the single biggest accuracy upgrade in calorie counting.
Calories
Calories are the biggest number on the table, and they’re per serving, same as everything else.
The trap here is comparing two products with different serving sizes. A yogurt that is “100 Calories per 100 g” and one that is “120 Calories per 175 g” are not what they look like at a glance. Divide both by their grams and the second one is lighter. When you’re choosing between products, calories per 100 g is the fair comparison.
The nutrients, and what % Daily Value means
Below calories, the table lists the nutrients in a fixed order, each with an amount and, for some, a % Daily Value. The % DV is how much of a full day’s reference amount one serving gives you.
Health Canada prints its own rule of thumb at the bottom of the table: 5% DV or less is a little, 15% DV or more is a lot. That’s the fastest way to use the column. You don’t need to know the reference amounts to see that a soup with 38% DV sodium is a lot of sodium.
These are the reference amounts behind the percentages, the same for everyone four and older:
| Nutrient | French on the label | Daily Value |
|---|---|---|
| Fat | Lipides | 75 g |
| Saturated + trans fat | Saturés + trans | 20 g |
| Carbohydrate | Glucides | no % DV |
| Fibre | Fibres | 28 g |
| Sugars | Sucres | 100 g |
| Protein | Protéines | no % DV |
| Sodium | Sodium | 2,300 mg |
| Potassium | Potassium | 3,400 mg |
| Calcium | Calcium | 1,300 mg |
| Iron | Fer | 18 mg |
Two things to know about this.
The % DV is not your target. The reference amounts are fixed values chosen so foods can be compared on one scale. Your own fibre or protein needs depend on your age, sex, size and goals. A 60-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man see the same 28 g fibre reference, but their actual targets are different. If you want your own numbers, this post has the reference intakes by age and sex, and the macro calculator works out protein, carbs and fat for your calorie goal.
Carbohydrate and protein have no % DV. They’re listed in grams only. That’s normal for a Canadian label, and it’s a useful tell, which I’ll come back to.
Carbohydrate includes the fibre and sugars
Fibre and sugars are indented under carbohydrate because they’re part of it. If a label says Carbohydrate 30 g, Fibre 8 g, Sugars 5 g, the total is 30 g, not 43 g.
If you count net carbs, subtract the fibre line from the carbohydrate line yourself. The label won’t do it for you, and an app that logs “carbs” from a Canadian label is logging the total.
The sugars line is total sugars, including what’s naturally in milk and fruit. Plain yogurt shows several grams of sugar even with nothing added. To see whether sugar was added, read the ingredient list, where sugar-based ingredients are now grouped together in brackets after the word “Sugars”.
Fat
Fat is the total. Saturated and trans fat are grouped into one % DV because they’re the two you’re told to limit. Unsaturated fats, the ones in olive oil, nuts and fish, aren’t broken out on most labels, but they’re inside the total.
The magnifying glass on the front
Since the start of 2026, most prepackaged foods that are high in saturated fat, sugars or sodium carry a black-and-white symbol on the front with a magnifying glass and the words High in and Élevé en, followed by whichever of the three applies.
The thresholds are set in % DV:
| Kind of food | Symbol appears at |
|---|---|
| Most foods | 15% DV or more per serving |
| Small-serving foods, 30 g or less, like sauces, dressings and crackers | 10% DV or more |
| Main dishes of 200 g or more, like frozen pizza or mac and cheese | 30% DV or more |
Some foods are exempt even when they’d qualify, including plain fruits and vegetables, plain milk, and single-ingredient foods where the symbol would state the obvious, like sugar, honey, maple syrup, salt, butter and cooking oils.
The symbol is a quick filter in the grocery aisle and it’s worth knowing what it is. But it’s built for sodium, sugar and saturated fat. It says nothing about calories. Plain almonds don’t carry it and a 28 g handful is still about 165 calories. A bottle of olive oil is exempt and a tablespoon is about 120. If you’re counting calories, the symbol is a hint about what’s in the food, not about how much of your day it takes up.
How to tell your app is showing a US label
A lot of calorie counters were built on American data, and their entries for Canadian products are often copied from the US version of the package. Recipes, serving sizes and fortification differ between the two countries, so the numbers can be off even when the product name matches.
You can usually spot a US label in the entry itself:
- A % DV next to total carbohydrate. US labels have one. Canadian labels don’t.
- An “Added Sugars” or “Includes Xg Added Sugars” line. That’s a US line, not a Canadian one.
- Vitamin D in the bottom section. US labels list vitamin D, calcium, iron and potassium. Canadian labels list potassium, calcium and iron.
- Servings only in ounces or “oz”, or English only. Canadian labels are bilingual and always give a metric amount.
If the entry looks American, scan the package in front of you or enter the Canadian label yourself. It takes a minute and you only do it once per product.
Rounding: where small numbers go missing
Nutrition labels round. Calories round to the nearest 5 or 10 depending on size, and small amounts of fat, sugars and sodium are rounded down to zero below cutoffs set in the regulations. So “0 g fat” means “less than a little”, not “none”.
For one serving it doesn’t matter. It starts to matter for foods you use often in small amounts: cooking spray, coffee creamer, sweetener packets, a “serving” of salad dressing that is one tablespoon when you used three. Those are the places where logged calories and real calories drift apart, and they’re worth weighing at least once so you know what your usual amount actually is.
A checklist for logging from the label
- Weigh the food and log grams. Use the gram figure in the serving line to scale.
- Compare products per 100 g, not per serving, when you’re choosing between them.
- Use the 5% and 15% rule for sodium, sugars and saturated fat. Skip the maths.
- Remember carbohydrate includes fibre. Subtract it yourself if you count net carbs.
- Check your app’s entry is the Canadian label. Look for the US tells above.
- Measure the small stuff once. Oils, dressings and creamers are where rounding and guessing pile up.
Where PocketChomp fits
I started building PocketChomp, a free Canadian calorie counter, after the big calorie counter’s barcode scanner kept struggling with Canadian products and then went behind a paywall. Its database starts with Canadian retail products and Health Canada’s Canadian Nutrient File, so a barcode scan finds the version on our shelves. When a product isn’t there, the label scanner reads the Nutrition Facts table straight off the package, in English or French, including the decimal commas on bilingual labels like “0,5 g”, and it skips the % DV column so a percentage is never logged as an amount. Scanning is free and unlimited. There are no ads, and it works without an account.
Daily Values and front-of-package thresholds are from Health Canada’s Table of Daily Values and the front-of-package nutrition symbol regulations, checked October 12, 2026. Calorie figures for almonds and olive oil are rounded typical values.