Home › Nutrition

How I Determine Which Foods Are More Healthful Than Others

By Andrew

Last Updated October 3, 2026

Updated October 2026: I first wrote this post in 2011, and while the basic idea still holds up, a lot has changed — the Nutrition Facts label, restaurant menus, and some of my own thinking. I’ve refreshed it with current numbers and a few new rules of thumb.

A friend once emailed me for advice on how to determine which foods are more healthful than others. Great question! The answer really does merit significantly more than a blog post (hey, that’s why we have nutritionists and dietitians, right?), but here’s where I start the process.

One important note up front: this is mostly about choosing between options that someone else made — whether that’s a restaurant menu or packaged foods at the grocery store. At home, things get a lot simpler. (More on that at the end.)

The short version

1. Start with calories. They’re still the single most useful number.
2. Choose the least processed option. Real, recognizable food beats something built in a factory.
3. Look for the most nutrition for those calories: protein, fiber, and vegetables.
4. Check the sodium. If the milligrams of sodium are higher than the calories, it’s salty.
5. Give vegetables extra credit, even if it costs a few more calories.
6. Look at the big picture: what else you’ve eaten today, and how full you’ll actually be.

And remember: it’s all relative. Read on for the details.

There’s no one right answer

First, realize that there’s no one way to determine if a food is healthier than another. Sometimes it’s obvious (fettuccine alfredo vs. steamed veggies), but usually it’s much more nuanced and there isn’t necessarily one right answer (veggie burger vs. turkey burger). Or worse, the choice that seems like a great one is actually far more unhealthful than the other option (chicken caesar salad vs. chicken breast sandwich).

There are plenty of scoring systems out there to help figure this out (and no shortage of apps that will happily give every food a letter grade), but none of them is perfect. Some are built around weight loss, some only look at one ingredient at a time, and some just count nutrients without caring what the food actually is. They can be useful, but none of them gives you the whole picture.

Know what the numbers mean

Before you start reading labels, it helps to know what you’re comparing against. The Daily Values on every Nutrition Facts label are based on 2,000 calories a day (your own needs may be higher or lower, depending on your age, sex, activity level, and overall health). The ones I pay the most attention to:

• Sodium: 2,300mg a day
• Saturated fat: 20g a day
• Added sugars: 50g a day
• Fiber: 28g a day (this one’s a goal, not a limit!)

A handy shortcut: try to keep any one meal to about a third of each limit. So if a single entrée has 1,200mg of sodium, you’ve used up more than half your day’s sodium in one sitting.

It’s all relative

See, here’s the thing. When I’m comparing options at a restaurant, I’m not holding them up against some perfect, ideal meal. I’m comparing what’s actually on that menu against each other. At a fast food place, almost everything is processed to some degree, so “only eat unprocessed food” isn’t much help when you’re standing at the counter. The goal is to choose better, not to find perfect.

That’s exactly how I put together my Menu Mondays recommendations. (The last thing I want to do is encourage anyone to eat at chain restaurants — but they’re not going away, so it makes more sense to help you find the most healthful options.) My “Best Choices” and “Worst Choices” are only compared within a specific category (i.e., “Sandwiches”). Sometimes there are no options worthy of “Best Choices” at all, but there are almost always some options that are significantly better than others, and some that are significantly worse.

So, here’s how I work through it:

1. Start with calories

When comparing similar food options, I generally look at the calories first — I find that to be the single most useful indicator. If a dinner is 450 calories and will be filling and satisfying, it’s probably a good choice… if it’s 750 calories, it still might be okay, but it’s not necessarily the best choice.

2. Choose the least processed option

Next, I look at what the food actually is. Whenever there’s a choice, I go for the one that’s closest to real, recognizable food, and furthest from something that was engineered in a factory. My go-to gut check is the Kitchen Test: could this food be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen, with whole-food ingredients? (You don’t have to be the one making it — it just has to be possible.)

At a restaurant, that usually means:

• A grilled chicken breast or a piece of fish over sliced deli meats, salami, bacon, or anything breaded and fried.
• Whole grains over white bread and refined flour (look at the fiber for a clue).
• Real cheese over “cheese product.”
• Oil and vinegar, or salsa, over creamy, sugary sauces with a long ingredient list.

Again, it’s relative. You probably won’t find anything truly unprocessed at a drive-thru (and that’s okay!), but there’s almost always something that’s less processed than the rest.

3. Look for the most nutrition for those calories

Then I look at what you’re actually getting for those calories. Two dishes with the same calories can be very different:

• Protein helps keep you full.
• Fiber does too — the higher the better, as long as it’s not from added fiber, like inulin. (Added fiber isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s cheating, and shouldn’t count for our purposes here.)
• Vegetables bring vitamins, minerals, and more fiber, and usually not many calories.

Protein tends to favor the meat options, and fiber tends to favor the beans-and-veggies options, so I look at both.

4. Check the sodium, and other red flags

After that, I look at sodium. Most prepared foods are outrageously high in sodium, and a single restaurant meal entrée appetizer can easily blow past a whole day’s worth.

Here’s my favorite rule of thumb, because you can do it in your head at the counter: if the milligrams of sodium are higher than the number of calories, it’s salty. A 500-calorie sandwich with 1,200mg of sodium? Salty. A 500-calorie sandwich with 450mg? Much better.

(It’s not perfect, of course. A light broth soup can be “salty” by this measure even if it doesn’t have much sodium overall. So for a full meal, I also aim for roughly 800mg or less — about a third of the daily limit.)

I then glance at the saturated fat content (which should be relatively low, especially if it’s coming from animal products) and added sugars, which are now listed right on the label (they weren’t when I first wrote this post!). Sugary drinks are the biggest culprit here, so I keep drinks out of the math and just stick with water or unsweetened iced tea.

5. Give vegetables extra credit

This is where I’ll sometimes break my own rules. If one dish is loaded with vegetables and another isn’t, I’ll often pick the veggie-heavy one even if it has a few more calories, or a little more sodium. A big salad or grain bowl full of greens, peppers, and beans is doing a lot more for you than a smaller plate of fried chicken strips, even if the numbers look similar.

6. Look at the big picture

The final aspect to consider is to look at the big picture, not just that one meal. When you’re choosing between entrées, it’s helpful to also consider how different this food is from your previous meals. More variety is more better!

You can’t eat by the numbers alone

So how do I put all this together? This is where it becomes more of an art than a science.

Let’s look at three sandwiches from an actual restaurant:

Sandwich A: Grilled Chicken
510 cal, 8g sat fat, 830mg sodium, 3g fiber, 31g protein

Sandwich B: Turkey
470 cal, 7g sat fat, 1,120mg sodium, 3g fiber, 25g protein

Sandwich C: Veggie
310 cal, 5g sat fat, 580mg sodium, 4g fiber, 16g protein

(I was going to leave off the type of sandwich, but that becomes an unrealistic comparison. You have to know what you’re eating, because that factors into the decision, of course! You can’t eat by the numbers alone.)

So, which would you choose?

The calories are all reasonable for lunch, though the Veggie is noticeably lighter. The saturated fat varies a little, but not hugely. And the fiber is disappointingly low across the board.

What about processing? The Turkey is sliced deli meat, which is about as processed as meat gets. A grilled chicken breast is closer to something you’d cook at home, and the Veggie is, well, veggies (plus bread and cheese).

That leaves us comparing the sodium and the protein. The Turkey is off the charts for sodium (about half your entire day’s allowance), so between that and the processing, let’s rule it out. The Chicken is high, too (more milligrams of sodium than calories, and over a third of the day). The Veggie is the lowest of the three at 580mg… but notice it’s still higher than its 310 calories. None of these is a low-sodium lunch!

But wait! The Chicken Sandwich has nearly twice the protein of the Veggie. It’ll be more filling and probably keep you fuller longer. If you’re going to eat the Veggie sandwich and be hungry again in an hour (and then grab a candy bar out of the vending machine), you’re probably better off going with the Chicken. On the other hand, maybe you know that the Veggie is filling enough for you, and you’ve got a banana on your desk, ready to go.

Here’s the twist: how you build it matters just as much as what you pick. Ask for that same chicken sandwich on whole-grain bread, with extra veggies and no cheese or sauce, and it drops to 300 calories and 570mg sodium, with 4g fiber and 26g protein. That’s fewer calories and less sodium than the Veggie, with way more protein. Suddenly it’s not a hard choice at all.

See my point? You have to weigh all these decisions (and frequently do it all in a split second), and decide what’s right for you, and what fits into your big picture.

Don’t be afraid to take your time, even if there’s a line of folks behind you. Think it through before you order, and then after you eat, pay attention to how your body responds. Learn from each experience. Know yourself, know what you’re eating, and listen to your body. That will go a long way towards helping you decide what’s right for you.

What about at home?

At home, it’s a different (and much simpler) game. You’re not choosing between finished dishes that someone else designed — you’re choosing the ingredients, and you decide how much salt, sugar, and oil go in.

So the order flips. Start with real, whole-food ingredients (if everything passes the Kitchen Test, you’re already off to a great start), load up on the vegetables, and the rest tends to take care of itself. That’s a big part of why I’m such a fan of cooking from scratch.

So next time you’re staring up at a menu board, start with the calories, pick the least processed option you can, and check that sodium. You’ll be glad you did.

—

Want to see this in action? Check out my Menu Mondays guides to more healthful options at popular chain restaurants.

Want a handy reference for reading labels? Grab my nutrition facts panel guide — it’s a one-page PDF that you can print and stick to your fridge or take with you when you go shopping.

How do YOU determine which foods are healthier than others? Share in the comments!

Photo by Jason Alley.