On May 20th, 2016, the FDA finalized their updated Nutrition Facts labels that are required on all packaged foods. These labels host a variety of new changes that will hopefully fuel more discussion about our food industry and health in general. While not the end-all-be-all of the health discussion, these labels should bring light to how our food is made, and what can be harmful or helpful.
One major issue with labels is most people ignore half of the relevant information while reading them. Generally, calories are the only thing people look at on a label because that is the important issue. They disregard serving size and most nutrients because as long as it's “low cal” they have nothing to worry about. The problem is that the calorie number displayed is for a single serving, not the entire package. The old label does nothing to deal with this problem, see below on the left:
Via FDA
While the “amount per serving” is there, it is easy to ignore. The label says 230 calories per serving, but with eight servings the entire package would amount to 1840 calories. This label also does nothing to show the reader the serving size. These problems make the entire label useless. What is the point of the calorie information or number of servings if no one knows how much of the product a single serving is? The new label on the right fixes this problem rather easily, however.
In this new label the number of servings per container is the first thing displayed. This shows readers right away that this package is not one serving, but eight. Underneath this, almost like a bullet point in an outline, is the serving size. By making the number of servings large and bold the label tells the reader immediately how many servings there are. The reader then asks "how much is one serving though?" and right underneath is the serving size. Good start!
But this new label does not stop there. Next, the calorie count is displayed even larger, and first. The old label displayed calories like every other bit of information. Also, above the calories is "amount in 2/3 cup" referring back to the serving size. This reminds people of the serving size, the information that makes the entire label valuable. Provided the reader is reading down this entire label they have been told, and reminded, of the serving size before anything else has even been shown. Well done label!
Moving down the label further we see almost no changes, the label still breaks down the food into both grams and percentages of daily values. However, the most important change in the new label is an added line. The old label lists "sugar" with only the gram measurements, but no percentages. For those of you who have not seen the documentary "Fed Up," this was done purposely because the food industry began replacing fat with sugar in their foods so that people would still buy their products. The food industry was required to remove fat from foods because at the time it was thought fat made you fat (not the case by the way.) Luckily, the new label adds two new additions. First, an additional line of "added sugars." This is huge. Now food is required to tell you how much sugar is not naturally occurring within it. Second, the label now tells you the daily value percentage of sugar! These two things are a massive step forward in encouraging healthy eating in the US.
By showing that our foods have added sugar and how much of that added sugar you should eat in a day this label will bring to light an issue that has almost entirely caused the obesity epidemic. This change will help shift the conversation about health by giving people the information they need to understand why sugar is not something you should be consuming very much of.
Will these labels solve the obesity epidemic? No, unfortunately many people will continue to disregard these labels entirely and choose their foods based solely off of what they crave. We still have the massive hurdle of how our society views obesity. As the problem becomes more common our views on what is considered unhealthy may shift as obese becomes the new overweight, and overweight becomes the new normal. We still have many problems to deal with in regards to obesity, but these labels are a step in the right direction. Very little else will have the ability to reach the entire country simultaneously, and that is a huge advantage.
