In a move that emulates programs in other countries, the FDA is considering a new front-of-label system that provides more information about a food product’s healthiness, or lack thereof. The idea is to give consumers better insight into what they’re consuming, in hopes of stemming the epidemic of food-triggered illness and disease in this country.

An article in Statnews.com emphasizes that it’s time for the US to catch up. Earlier this year, the FDA “unveiled a proposal, long in the works, for a mandatory food labeling system that it says is intended to combat chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, that have been linked to excessive consumption of saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars. Sixty percent of Americans live with at least one chronic disease, and 40% live with two or more,” the article notes.

Along the way, as has been proven in Europe and elsewhere, requiring these disclosures has spurred a healthier food supply, as individual product manufacturers have been incentivized to make their offerings cleaner and less processed. In turn, this impacts the entire nutritional industry in a positive way.

That can happen here, too. Notes Statnews.com, “An eventual side effect, research and expert commentary suggests, could be nudging the food industry to make healthier food, too.” 

One high-profile example is Europe’s Nutri-Score system that uses a color-coded scale grading foods from A to E in a variety of areas, helping consumers determine product health based on nutritional quality in a variety of categories.

This, no doubt, has contributed to minimizing the number of ingredients (especially nutritionally suspect or worthless ones) so that the product is cleaner and more nutritionally sound. For example, many European products contain just two or three ingredients. In the US, by contrast, some of the same products contain so many garbage ingredients that they have to be listed in teeny type to
list everything!

Healthier food ingredients, driven in part by the product labels, have become commonplace around the world. Notes The Washington Post last year, “More than 40 countries have adopted easy-to-understand, front-of-package nutrition information showing, at a glance, which foods are more – or less – healthful. Thus far, the United States has not required front-of-package labeling, relying instead on the food industry’s voluntary efforts, laden with confusing numbers and percentages. Compare that with the ‘excess sugar’ stop signs you’ll see in Mexico, the Nutri-Score system used in France, or the Health Star Ratings in New Zealand.”

Needless to say, this provides a valuable customer service, even if consumers go grudgingly. After all, it’s often more fun to consume good-tasting stuff that’s a nutritional wasteland than try to stay healthy. But, as the clear links between good health, energy, mental acuity and focus, and leaner appearance become more inextricably tied to healthy food, more people in the US are jumping on the bandwagon.

The Post article adds, “With enormous profit in highly processed, nutrient-poor foods, it is to be expected that food industry groups – the American Beverage Association and Sugar Association, among others – would favor labels that make it harder for consumers to discern which products are healthier than others. Many of these same food companies have been fighting consumer-friendly front-of-package food labels for nearly two decades. In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) published its first report recommending a nationwide front-of-package nutrition labeling system.”

The FDA points out that the agency is currently accepting comments on the new label requirements. FDA.gov notes, “The FDA is proposing to require a front-of-package (FOP) nutrition label on most packaged foods to provide accessible, at-a-glance information to help consumers quickly and easily identify how foods can be part of a healthy diet. The FDA’s proposed FOP nutrition label, referred to as the Nutrition Info box, would complement the Nutrition Facts label that is required on most food packages.”

FDA.gov continues, “Displaying simplified, at-a-glance, nutrition information that details and interprets the saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content of a food as ‘Low,’ ‘Med,’ or ‘High’ on the front of food packages would provide consumers with an accessible description of the numerical information found in the Nutrition Facts label. Current federal dietary recommendations advise US consumers to limit these three nutrients to achieve a nutrient-dense diet within calorie limits.”

With cleaner food advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now serving as US secretary of health and human services, the time appears right for a major shift in how this country views and consumes food.

Mark Lusky (www.markluskycommunications.com/mark-lusky-bio) is the president of Lusky Enterprises, Inc. (www.markluskycommunications.com), a 41-year-established marketing communications company dedicated to clients that live and breathe trust, likeability, and respect (thereby eschewing the “lie, cheat, steal” culture so prevalent today). Contact him at: 303-621-6136; mark@marklusky.com.