This morning, First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg announced proposed changes to Nutrition Facts labels, the most notable of which include clearly listing the amount of added sugars and updating serving size requirements to be more in line with the amounts that people actually eat.
"Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it's good for your family," the First Lady said in the announcement. "So this is a big deal, and it's going to make a big difference for families all across this country."
The changes are in line with the FLOTUS' Let's Move! initiative, but they're also based around the latest scientific information about nutrition and its impact on conditions like obesity and heart disease. The recommendation to list added sugars, for example, comes as a result of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans' determination that people in the U.S. are consuming too many calories from added sugars. Other proposed changes include:
- Updated daily intake recommendations for nutrients like sodium, dietary fiber, and vitamin D
- Mandatory listing of potassium and vitamin D content on nutrition labels (these were not required before but are now considered "nutrients of public health significance"). Listing calcium and iron content was required before and will still be required, while listing the content of vitamins A and C will now be optional (since research indicates the general population isn't deficient in these nutrients).
- Removal of the "Calories from Fat" item on nutritional labels. "Total Fat," "Saturated Fat," and "Trans Fat" declarations will still be required, but this change is being suggested because the latest research indicates that type of fat is more important than amount.
- Changed serving size requirements to reflect what people actually eat (as noted above). This includes a requirement that packaged foods people usually consume in one sitting (like a bag of chips or a bottle of soda) be considered a single serving.
- The addition of a "per package" column for nutrient information (this would appear alongside a "per serving" column) when foods come in large packages that might be consumed in one sitting (for example, a 24-ounce bottle of soda or a pint of ice cream).
- A new design for the Nutrition Facts label that will make the most important information easier to see at a glance. Here's a mockup of the new design:
These newly released details reveal what exactly the FDA proposed to the White House last month. If these suggested changes are accepted, they'll be just the second time nutrition information labels have been significantly altered since 1993, when they first became mandatory. (In 2006, food manufacturers were required to list trans fat content.)
Of course, the changes won't go into effect immediately—they're just being proposed at this point. For the next step, the FDA is making them available for public comment for 90 days. In the meantime, this infographic gives some more info on the proposed serving size changes:
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