September 16, 2022
How helpful are these nutrition labels? Do they tell you enough how much fat, sugar and sodium you’re consuming. Do you think they help you make better choices about what you eat? What if those labels instead looked like this… and were on the front of all packages.
Well, that’s one of the policy ideas that may be front and center at an upcoming White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health.
Before i get into this – I want to thank my TikTok subscribers for voting for this story for me to cover this week as a bonus. If you want to vote, subscribe to my TikTok page during my next live event.
So several nutrition advocate organization have been petitioning the FDA to use its authority to establish a simple, standardized, and mandatory front-of-package labeling system for all packaged foods sold in the united states. They believe — the widespread availability, affordability and marketing of processed and ultra-processed food and drinks have led to poor diets that lead to increased cases of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic diseases. They say that’s happening because consumers don’t have time at the grocery store to “be detectives” and search for a label and figure all that stuff out.
They believe the United States should make the labels really simple and clear on the front of the package like they do in several other countries. For example, you can see this label uses a traffic light concept – red indicates there’s a high amount of sugar or yellow indicates there’s a medium amount of fat and green indicates this is low in salt. Some countries even have a nutri-score that grades and color codes food from “a” to “e”.
Just so you know — the nutrition facts labels as we know them today weren’t always around. In fact they didn’t start being mandatory on packaging until 1994 after Congress passed a law to help consumers understand what they were eating and help them make better, healthier food choices. The requirements for those labels have been revised several times but now advocates say it’s time for another change.
The food industry completely disagrees and says there is insufficient real-world evidence to show labels like this would even influence consumer behavior. And they also believe the FDA doesn’t have the authority to mandate front-of-package labeling because –in their view – it’s a first amendment violation because they see it as “forced speech.”
The FDA says it’s currently studying how the front of package labeling is working in other countries but hasn’t made any decisions yet. During the conference on hunger, nutrition and health the white house will also be unveiling its national strategy to bring together the public and private sector to do several things including improve food access and affordability, and empower consumers to make have access to healthy food choices. The conference will be held at the end of the month.
More on the White House Conference on hunger, nutrition, and health here.
More from the Pan American Health Organization on front of label packaging policy here.
More on the FDA petition for front of label packaging here.
I would like to see more information one the additives. Red yellow and green light system.
Example Trisodium Phosphate: would it be green yellow or red? The sugar fat and sodium seems pretty clear to me. On today’s labels