Evidence desk · Field tool
Reading a food label
Before you read on
You're in the aisle holding a "protein" bar: 190 calories, 10 g protein, 12 g added sugar, 2.5 g saturated fat, 200 mg sodium. You have ten seconds and a 1,800-calorie cut. Buy it, or put it back? Decide first — then check yourself against the scan below.
The whole read, in one breath
A Nutrition Facts panel has about fifteen numbers. On your plan you read four and ignore the rest. The engine is protein per calorie: on an 1,800-calorie cut with a 170 g floor, roughly 37% of your calories must come from protein — so a food earns its place only if it's protein-dense. Then three brakes, each wired to a number on your panel: added sugar (HOMA-IR 3.65), saturated fat (ApoB 89 + South-Asian risk), sodium (lisinopril). Fiber is the green flag.
The one thing that changes across cut → build → maintain is the calorie ceiling — how much discretionary room you have. The brakes don't move, because they're wired to your biology, not your phase. Learn the scan once; turn a single dial as the phase changes.
What's inside
The ten-second scan
Labels are designed to be read top to bottom, and that's the trap — protein, the number that matters most to you, is printed near the bottom. An efficient scan ignores the printed order and follows a fixed path: anchor the serving, read the calories, jump down to protein, then run the three brakes, then glance at fiber. Same seven moves on every package.
| # | Read | What you're deciding |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Serving size + servings per container | Anchor everything. Is the whole package one serving or three? Every number below is per this amount, not per package. |
| 2 | Calories per serving | The cost. Hold it against your daily ceiling (1,800 on the cut). |
| 3 | Protein (jump down) | The engine. Divide by calories — is this buying protein or just spending calories? (next section) |
| 4 | Added sugars (not "total sugars") | Brake 1. Your highest-value thing to minimize — HOMA-IR 3.65 + TCF7L2. |
| 5 | Saturated fat | Brake 2. The lipid brake — ApoB 89 + South-Asian risk. Keep it low. |
| 6 | Sodium | Brake 3. You're on lisinopril for BP — keep the daily total in check. |
| 7 | Dietary fiber | Green flag. Counts toward 25–30 g/day; high fiber usually means less-processed. |
Two shortcuts that make the scan faster. The 5/20 rule: on the % Daily Value column, 5% or less is "low," 20% or more is "high." For the brakes you want low DVs; for fiber you want high. And the sodium-to-calorie check: in a processed food, milligrams of sodium should be roughly at or below the calories per serving — 200 mg in a 190-calorie bar is fine; 600 mg in a 200-calorie soup is not.
Why protein-per-calorie is the master number
On a GLP-1, appetite is suppressed and the calorie budget is small — so the scarce resource isn't willpower, it's calories that also carry protein. Your floor is 170 g/day. At 4 calories per gram that's 680 protein-calories, which against an 1,850-calorie day is about 37% of everything you eat. Translate that to the label and you get one clean heuristic:
| Density | Verdict | Reads like |
|---|---|---|
| ≥ 10 g / 100 cal | Protein-dense — pulls its weight | Egg whites, whey, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, chicken, white fish, a clean beef stick. |
| 5–10 g / 100 cal | Contributor — fine with eyes open | 2% Fairlife, salmon, edamame, most legumes, eggs. |
| < 5 g / 100 cal | Treat or filler — spends calories, buys little protein | Most bars, granola, chips, "protein" cookies, oils, sauces. |
You don't need every food above 10 — oil and avocado never will be — you need the day's average to clear roughly 9–10 g per 100 calories. The test's real job is catching impostors: the "protein" bar at 190 cal / 10 g is only 5.3 g per 100 cal — it's a candy bar wearing a protein label. Your whey scoop is 110 cal / 25 g = 23 g per 100, which is why it's the cheapest way to defend the floor against a suppressed appetite.
The three brakes
These are the "minimize" column, and the reason they're your brakes rather than generic advice: each one maps to a flagged number on your panel. They don't relax in any phase, because the biology behind them doesn't.
| Brake | Line on the label | Your read | Why — your panel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Added sugar | "Includes Xg Added Sugars" (ignore total sugars — fruit and dairy sugar are fine) | Aim well under the 50 g DV; treat <25 g/day as the real target, mostly from whole food. Per item, ≤5% DV is "low." | HOMA-IR 3.65 · TCF7L2 T/C |
| Saturated fat | "Saturated Fat Xg" (indented under Total Fat) | The 20 g DV is a ceiling to stay well under; your ApoB target argues for the low end (~<15 g/day). Per item, ≤5% DV is "low." | ApoB 89 · South-Asian CV · LDL <70 |
| Sodium | "Sodium Xmg" | Keep the day's total roughly 1,500–2,300 mg. Per item, ≤140 mg is "low"; use the sodium-≤-calories check. | Lisinopril · BP management |
When you hit the sugar line, check the name
Added-sugar grams tell you how much; the ingredient list tells you which kind, and your Life OS sweetener hierarchy already ranks them. Fine: monk fruit, allulose, a monk-fruit/allulose blend. Limit: erythritol blends (Truvia, Lakanto) and sugar alcohols. Avoid (your tier): HFCS, dextrose, maltodextrin, plain sucrose — the TCF7L2 variant makes these the worst trade for you specifically. A "no added sugar" bar sweetened with maltodextrin still trips your brake.
The ingredient list — the truth serum
The Nutrition Facts panel is the summary; the ingredient list is the source. When the two disagree, believe the list. Three things to run your eye over, in order:
| Check | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Length & order | Ingredients are listed by weight, most first. Short list of recognizable foods = less processed. If a sugar (or a sugar alias) is in the first three, it's a sweet food regardless of the marketing. |
| Added-sugar aliases | The same sugar hides under many names: cane juice, brown rice syrup, dextrose, maltodextrin, fruit-juice concentrate, agave. Several near the top = a lot of added sugar split up to look small. |
| The fats | For your ApoB: the ones to flag are "fully hydrogenated" / "partially hydrogenated" (trans) and heavy tropical fats — palm, palm-kernel, coconut oil — which are saturated. Don't fear seed/vegetable oils (canola, soybean, sunflower); linoleic acid is neutral-to-protective, and swapping them for butter or coconut is the wrong trade for you (see the Sisson card). |
By phase: cut, build, maintain
Here's the payoff of the "one dial" framing. Lay the same scan across your three phases and almost nothing moves — the brakes are fixed because your genetics and CV risk are fixed; the protein floor is fixed at 170 g. The only real change is the calorie ceiling, which sets how much discretionary, non-protein room you have to spend.
| Scan step | Cut — now | Build — Phase 2 (optional) | Maintain — Sharpen & lifelong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calorie ceiling | 1,800–1,900/day — tight; every calorie audited | +150–500 surplus (~2,400–2,800) — loosest | ~2,100–2,300 — moderate |
| Protein floor | 170 g | 180–200 g (2.0–2.3 g/kg) | 170 g |
| Protein density bar | strictest — favor ≥10 g/100 cal | still matters; more room for carbs around training | ~8 g/100 cal average |
| Added sugar | brake on | brake on | brake on |
| Saturated fat | brake on | brake on | brake on |
| Sodium | brake on | brake on | brake on |
| Fiber | 25–30 g | 25–30 g | 25–30 g |
| Discretionary room | almost none — label-reading matters most here | most — can absorb a denser carb/treat | some — fit treats around the floor |
The phase rule, in one line
On the cut, the calorie ceiling is so low that the protein-density test does most of the work — a low-density food crowds out protein you can't afford to miss. On the build, the surplus buys room, so a denser carb or the occasional treat fits around a higher protein floor, not instead of it. On maintenance, you're just holding the line. Through all three, the three brakes never lift — that's the tell that they're biology, not phase.
For you
The whole scan, pinned to your actual numbers — your panel on the left, the call it forces at the shelf on the right.
| Your number | What it makes you read for |
|---|---|
| Protein floor 170 g, cut at 1,800–1,900 kcal, appetite suppressed (Zepbound + Vyvanse) | Protein-per-calorie is your north star. Favor ≥10 g/100 cal; let whey backstop the floor. Below 1,400 kcal is muscle-loss territory — the floor matters more than the deficit. |
| HOMA-IR 3.65, TCF7L2 T/C | Added sugar is the single highest-value brake. Read "Added Sugars," not "Total." Maltodextrin/dextrose/HFCS in the ingredient list = put it back. |
| ApoB 89, South-Asian risk, small-dense LDL, LDL-C target <70 | Saturated fat is a real brake for you (not for everyone). Flag tropical fats and hydrogenated oils; don't fear seed oils or swap to butter/coconut. |
| On lisinopril, BP-managed | Run the sodium-≤-calories check; keep the day's total ~1,500–2,300 mg. Office staples (beef sticks, crisps) are the usual sodium leak. |
| Fiber target 25–30 g, on psyllium | Treat high fiber as a green flag; it counts toward your target and tracks with less-processed food. Label fiber + your psyllium scoop close the gap. |
| Mediterranean overlay (PREDIMED-Plus), olive oil as primary fat | When the ingredient list leads with olive or avocado oil, whole grains, nuts, legumes — that's your pattern. Ultra-processed and "minimal red meat" are the defaults to weight against. |
Worked example
Back to the bar from the hook: 190 cal, 10 g protein, 12 g added sugar, 2.5 g sat fat, 200 mg sodium, 3 g fiber, one bar per serving. Run the scan:
- 1–2 · Serving & calories — one bar = 190 cal. That's ~10% of your cut day for a snack. Steep, so it had better deliver.
- 3 · Protein density — 10 g ÷ 190 cal = 5.3 g per 100 cal. Below the line. It's a contributor at best, despite the "protein" on the front.
- 4 · Added sugar — 12 g, 24% DV. That alone trips the brake — roughly half a sensible day's added sugar in one snack, against your HOMA-IR.
- 5–6 · Sat fat / sodium — 2.5 g sat fat (13% DV, borderline) and 200 mg sodium (fine, ≤ calories).
- Verdict — put it back. Mediocre protein density and a sugar-brake failure. It's a candy bar with a protein halo. A Chobani Zero (60 cal, 12 g protein, 0 added sugar = 20 g/100 cal) does the opposite job for a third of the calories.
Now you finish one. A grass-fed beef stick: 60 cal, 6 g protein, 1 g sat fat, 0 g added sugar, 140 mg sodium. What's the protein density, and which brake do you watch? (Density = 6 ÷ 60 = 10 g/100 cal — passes. Sugar and sat fat are clean; the one to watch is sodium, since these stack fast as an office staple.)
Quick recall — cover the page
- What's the master number, and why is it printed in the wrong place to find easily?
- Name your three brakes and the panel value each is tied to.
- "Total Sugars" vs "Added Sugars" — which do you read, and why?
- What's the one thing that actually changes across cut, build, and maintain?
- The 5/20 rule: for fiber you want it ___; for sodium you want it ___.
Explain it back
In one sentence: "I read a food label by —" (finish it as if to someone who's never seen the back of a package).
The machinery behind this
This is the execution layer of the protocol — the same Life OS numbers, applied at the shelf instead of the spreadsheet. The brakes come from your operating filters; the "is a marketing claim strong enough to trust?" instinct is vetting the product and surrogate vs hard outcomes from the toolkit.
Personalized from your Life OS — Food & nutrition (RMR 1,844; cut 1,800–1,900 kcal; 170 g protein floor; 25–30 g fiber; sweetener hierarchy; PREDIMED-Plus overlay) and the Physique roadmap (phase calorie/protein targets). General references: U.S. FDA, "How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label" (the 5/20 rule, added-sugars line); AHA added-sugar and saturated-fat guidance; the per-supplement cards on this desk. A personal field tool, not medical advice — confirm anything touching your medications with your prescriber.