Every figure on this site is expressed per 100 g, which makes unlike foods comparable for the first time. Commercial labels instead use serving sizes chosen by the manufacturer — 30 g of cereal, 12 g of chips — that often understate what people actually eat. The per-100 g convention strips that variable out.
Water content rewrites everything
Comparing raw lettuce with dried pasta on equal weight tells you little: one is mostly water. When two foods sit at very different moisture levels, compare them in the same preparation state — cooked with cooked, dried with dried — or normalize mentally by imagining the cooked weight of the raw figure.
Density vs portion
Density answers which food has more of a nutrient; portion answers what you will actually absorb. Oil is extremely dense in calories, but nobody drinks it by the glass. Nuts are calorie-dense in normal handfuls. Judge dense foods by realistic serving patterns, not by per-100 g figures alone.
The columns worth checking first
For most foods: calories, protein, fiber, sugars, sodium, and the fat breakdown. Micronutrient columns matter most when you are evaluating a specific need — iron-rich choices during pregnancy, calcium-rich choices for bone-building years, potassium-rich choices when reducing sodium.
Percentages, when labels have them
Percent daily values on packaged foods use a 2,000 kcal reference: 5% DV or less per serving is low, 20% or more is high. Our tables give absolute values instead, so you can apply whichever reference suits your own needs rather than a population average.