by TThe tech industry has a new trend: adopting “transparency labels” based on the iconic Nutrition Facts panel found on food packaging. In 2020, Apple introduced “Privacy Labels” aimed at revealing how apps handle user data. And that was just the beginning. Starting April 10, the FCC is requiring internet service providers to display “Broadband Facts” labels detailing pricing, speeds and data caps. Meanwhile, some policymakers and industry analysts have called for an “AI Nutrition Facts” label to clarify how artificial intelligence systems create content.
This rush to emulate the Nutrition Facts panel underscores the label’s status as a leading model for consumer transparency. However, the history of how it achieved that status demonstrates the power — and limitations — of using such labels as a regulatory tool. They can inform consumers, but they can also prevent more serious regulation that is necessary to adequately protect the public interest.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) debated the proper way to protect consumers from misinformation and fear in health food markets. At first, officials opposed nutritional labeling of food, seeing it as unnecessary “quackery” or the prerogative of medical specialists who treat the sick.
But increasingly, the FDA has had to weigh the growing legitimate medical interest in using diet as a preventative public health solution, as well as the rise of a new self-improvement culture that has More health conscious Americans. FDA officials were also aware of the decline in public confidence in the government’s ability to make decisions on behalf of consumers about their private lives after years of scandals. This changed the thinking of officials and they began to accept that Americans had the right – and perhaps even the need – to seek health information for food. They saw that informative labels were enabling consumers to make choices for themselves, based on their own lifestyle, without FDA paternalism.
This new approach led to the introduction in 1973 of a “Nutrition Information” panel to encourage the food industry to make healthier packaging choices. Just adding the label was voluntary, but if companies wanted to actively promote heather or food nutrient claims they had to include it in the balance of their promotional statements.
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Although there were some prominent authors in the media, the design of the nutrition information panel lacked visual impact. If anything, it arguably did more harm than good, as it cleared the way for food companies to hype their products with dubious claims of health benefits. They focused on nutrition, while hiding other information that could be critical for consumers to make educated decisions, such as where food came from or was processed.
This trend accelerated during the 1970s and 1980s as food companies bombarded consumers with hard-to-find nutritional information. By 1989, US Health and Human Services Secretary Louis W. Sullivan had to admit that “consumers need to be linguists, scientists and mind readers to understand many of the labels they see.”
The confusing labels have prompted increased calls for the FDA to update nutrition labeling rules. In 1990, Congress passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which ultimately mandated that the FDA design a uniform nutrition label for all packaged foods. Over three years, the agency conducted extensive consumer research and stakeholder outreach with both the food industry and relevant consumer and health groups.
Unlike in 1973, this time, officials focused on the design of the label as well. They hired Greenfield Belser Ltd., a firm specializing in legal branding headed by graphic designer Burkey Belser. According to Belser, FDA Commissioner David Kessler asked for his firm’s help out of fear that the new label would look nothing and no one would know we had even done anything.
Belser, working with colleagues and policy experts, began to revamp the label’s layout and visuals into its now iconic design. They introduced indented subgroups and hairlines for readability. They used the Helvetica font because it was widely available, but also because it was easy to read. Most importantly, they gave the panel a bold title, “Nutrition Facts,” along with black and white text, and put a one-point rule around the label. The aim of all these measures was to clearly identify the label as a distinct feature of the food packaging.
In an interview, Belser argued that the black box around the label indicated that “manufacturers could not intrude on public property.” The boldface title helped transform Nutrition Facts into a “government brand.” In fact, a few years later the FDA hired Belser to “broaden the brand” and create a similar “Drug Facts” label for drug packaging.
The FDA launched a multi-million dollar PR blitz to introduce the nutrition label. It included television commercials featuring celebrities – such as baseball star Roger Clemens and children’s favorite animated monkey, Curious George – educational materials distributed across the country to schools and doctor’s offices, and television talk show appearances by the leadership of the FDA. They commented on the label’s ability to help Americans make healthier choices, live longer and better lives, and thereby lower health care costs.
The label was an instant hit with consumers and critics alike. By 1996, design critic Massimo Vignelli was celebrating it as a triumph of socially responsible “information architecture” that perfectly married form and function. Its clean presentation of objective information contrasted with the push and flash of colorful, biased food advertising.
The label seemed like a perfect solution. It allowed policymakers to push consumers and businesses toward achieving goals instead of enacting what legal scholar Cass Sunstein – a proponent of this new approach – labeled strict “command and control” measures “. The public and the media praised its simplicity and clarity, and food manufacturers sought to reformulate products to improve nutrient profiles.
But over the past 30 years, America’s public health crisis has deepened as obesity, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses have grown unchecked. Although well intentioned, the Nutrition Facts label was no panacea.
One issue was the distortion of commercial messages that distorted nutrition facts through clever marketing. As the public education campaign surrounding the new label petered out, the number of health promotion claims by food companies about nutritional information dropped, causing public health messages to fade away easily. . The most obvious example of this was front-of-pack labeling manufacturers and retailers developed to highlight specific nutritional facts for a product, often taking them out of context to make food appear healthier than it is. that was.
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Driven by a common bias – in particular the tendency to keep buying the same food product unaware that it has changed or is less healthy – consumers also struggled to interpret labels holistically for a balanced diet to create among a sea of information. Furthermore, framing nutritional health as an individualized “choice” ignored deeper barriers to healthy eating such as “food deserts” where it was impossible to find fresh fruits and vegetables or the poverty constraints placed on people’s food choices . For all its design prowess, Nutrition Facts embraced an ideology of consumer empowerment that was ill-equipped to address systemic disadvantage.
Ultimately, the label’s biggest impact may have been to catalyze food companies to cut unhealthy nutrients, such as saturated fat and sodium, and boost healthier ones, such as fiber and protein. encouraged by consumer scrutiny. But this had little to do with the lack of information the label was supposed to solve, and often manufacturers simply substituted one unhealthy ingredient for another.
This mixed legacy offers lessons for policymakers as they consider transparency solutions for technologies such as AI, online privacy and now broadband.
Simple design and accessible information disclosure and political appeal have undeniable value. They can catalyze industry accountability and create pressure to incorporate public values into market choices. However, labels alone are not enough to solve complex social issues. Their individualistic ethics of “empowerment” ignore socio-economic barriers to access. And their “intuitive” design often transcends complex contextual nuances.
More importantly, there is a real danger that there will be a risk of deeper and more stringent regulations that could justify the disclosure of information. As media scholar Michael Schudson has noted, “it gives the government the least invasive measure of some social problem.”
But before choosing that option, policymakers need to assess whether that labeling can address key public concerns—from algorithmic bias to data commodification to affordable internet access. If not, stronger regulatory oversight may be needed, with labeling playing a supporting role in education rather than being a stand-alone solution.
Armed consumers cannot replace asking whether certain industry practices should be allowed in the first place. That’s the lesson of our most iconic infomercial.
Xaq Frohlich is an associate professor of the history of technology at Auburn University and author of From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age.
Made with History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History by TIME here. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of TIME’s editors.
