by The Food and Drug Administration is expected to propose a change to prepackaged food sold in America: a requirement that the front of packages display important nutrition information in addition to the nutrition label already on the back.
The concept, designed to quickly inform busy consumers of the health consequences of the food and drinks they are considering buying, is not new: Around the world, many countries already have front-end nutrition labels that comes in different designs. In Chile, for example, a stop sign symbol on the front of an item indicates if it is high in sugar, saturated fat, sodium or calories. In Israel, such food and drinks have a red warning label. And in Singapore, drinks display a letter grade based on how nutritious they are.
Advocates have been pushing the FDA for nearly two decades to require front-of-package labels, which they say help people make healthier choices and prompt food manufacturers to reformulate their recipes so they have fewer warnings. on their products. The FDA remained largely silent on the issue until announcing plans to inspect front-of-package labels as part of a national health strategy released during a landmark White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in 2022. Since then, it has revised. literature on front-of-pack labeling and conducted focus groups to test label designs.
But the idea faces opposition from trade associations representing American food and beverage makers, which created their own voluntary system to highlight certain nutrients on the front of packages more than a decade ago. And some of the label designs the FDA is considering could be challenged on First Amendment grounds.
“The US interprets free speech much more broadly and more inclusively than any other country in the world,” said Jennifer Pomeranz, an associate professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health who has researched barriers to the First Amendment initial mandate. -de-package food labels.
Designs that are purely factual — stating the number of grams of added sugars, for example — are more likely to be considered constitutional designs than interpretive designs with shapes or colors that indicate a product is unhealthy, her research found .
“It starts to get more iffy when you get into subjective,” Pomeranz said.
Among the multiple label options tested by the FDA, some used traffic light colors to indicate whether there was a high (red), medium (yellow) or low (green) amount of saturated fat, sodium or added sugars; others stated that if a product was “high in” those nutrients, sometimes adding to the percentage of the recommended daily value contained in a serving.
An FDA spokesman declined to reveal to NBC News what label design it will use and did not say exactly when the agency would release its proposed rule, other than to say “it’s targeting this summer,” despite setting a deadline before this. this month.
The Consumer Brands Association and the food industry association FMI, which created a voluntary label system for the food and drink industry called Facts up Front which was launched in 2011, have made it clear that they are against mandatory interpretation designs such as the red light system/ green light. . Interpretive labels will “increase unnecessary fear in consumers based on one limiting nutrient without providing meaningful information about how that food item may fit into overall healthy eating patterns,” they wrote in a public comment to the FDA in 2022 .
They also say their voluntary system addresses consumer needs. Facts up Front uses up to four icons on the front of packages to highlight calories, saturated fat, sodium and added sugars by serving size. Manufacturers can also include nutritional information for up to two “stimulated nutrients,” such as potassium or fiber. The Consumer Brands Association says that hundreds of thousands of products carry Front Facts: 207,000 foods and beverages will display them as of 2021, according to the group’s most recent data available.
“It’s really about giving consumers a quick, consistent and holistic look at the nutritional composition of whatever they buy, and then helping those consumers make informed decisions,” said Sarah Gallo, the association’s vice president of policy. products.
Advocates for mandatory front-of-package labeling disagree, arguing that the Facts up Front campaign is underutilized: In contrast, the federally mandated nutrition facts label on the back or side of packages appears on billions of products.
“Front-of-pack labeling is only reliable for consumers if it is visible throughout the entire food supply, not just on the products of a handful of manufacturers who opt into a voluntary program,” said Eva Greenthal, senior policy scientist at the food . and the health advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which first petitioned the FDA in 2006 to implement front-of-package labels.
She added that Facts up Front does not provide enough context to be helpful.
“Facts up Front does not provide any additional tools to help the consumer interpret that information,” she said. “There is something like the word ‘high in.’ we need.”
Courtney Gaine, president and CEO of the Sugar Association, the trade association for the US sugar industry, said her group supports transparency but questions whether mandatory initial labeling will improve Americans’ diets.
“The evidence doesn’t seem to be there to show that this will make a difference,” she said.
But Greenthal and other advocates say there is data from around the world to back it up. In Chile, which in 2016 was the first country to implement front-of-pack nutrition information, studies show that people have made healthier purchases and are choosing healthier product reformulations.
“I think it’s a very classic food industry, anti-regulatory tactic to deny the science in support of a new policy that may be difficult to implement but beneficial to society,” Greenthal said.
In its own review of the scientific literature on front-of-package labels, the FDA concluded that the labels “may help consumers identify healthy foods” and “appear to be helpful for those with lower nutritional knowledge and for busy shoppers”.
The discussion comes as the percentage of Americans considered overweight or obese has increased, with obesity affecting approximately 42% of US adults. More than 1 million Americans die from diet-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and certain cancers each year, according to the FDA.
The statistics don’t mean that the nutrition facts box that was required on the back or side of food packaging three decades ago has failed, said Xaq Frohlich, associate professor of history at Auburn University and author of the book “From Label to Table : Regulating Food in America in the Information Age.”
“Every time the label changes, the food industry has reformulated its foods,” he said. “So even if you’re not reading the label, the food is changing, and it’s having that kind of impact.”
Greenthal said there are many people who would benefit from more nutrition information on the front of packages: busy parents going through the supermarket, people with low levels of nutrition literacy, and anyone else who has limited time and energy to invest in make their food choices.
“Policies like front-of-pack labeling couldn’t come sooner,” she said. “Chronic diet-related disease is one of the most important problems facing our country and hinders the health of our population.”
