by A new government proposal to place nutrition labels on the front of food packages aims to help Americans make more informed decisions about what they eat. Research and expert commentary suggests that a possible side effect could be to encourage the food industry to also produce healthier foods.
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday unveiled a long-in-the-works proposal for a mandatory food labeling system that it says will combat chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes that are linked to excessive consumption of saturated fats, sodium and added sugar. Sixty percent of Americans live with at least one chronic illness and 40 percent live with two or more.
“We believe Food should be a tool for wellness, not a contributor to chronic disease,” Rebecca Buckner, deputy director of the Agency for Human Nutrition Policy, said in a news conference Tuesday.
The proposed label is a black-and-white box that displays the percentage of the daily recommended amount of sodium, added sugars, and saturated fat in a serving and indicates whether a serving has a “low,” “medium,” or “medium” value.” “high” content of each nutrient. The FDA says the reviews could provide an incentive for manufacturers to reduce levels of these three nutrients, although that is not the goal of the agency proposing the change. “We anticipate that there may be manufacturers that want to reformulate to move from high to mid category or from mid to low category,” Buckner noted.
The proposal is open for public comment over the next three months. What happens next is up to the Trump administration and perhaps Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pledged to take on the food industry as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” movement when he takes over as the new head of the Department of Food Food safety is confirmed by health and social services.
Reactions to the proposal from nutrition experts and the food industry have so far been mixed, with both groups objecting to the design of food labeling for different reasons. However, research shows that the introduction of new food labels in countries around the world may prompt manufacturers to change their practices.
“When there are mandatory systems, there are changes in the industry that try to reduce the amounts of added sugar, sodium or saturated fats in order to get below these limits and thus avoid a warning label,” said Christina Roberto, extraordinary Professor of Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine has studied the impact of food labeling requirements.
However, the effects are not always clear, she noted. The food industry has reduced the amount of added sugar in products in recent years, but this means more sugar substitutes such as aspartame need to be introduced into the food supply. “There is cause for concern,” she said. “You don’t want to cause any other unintended consequences.”
How will the food industry react?
If the rule is finalized under the new Trump administration, manufacturers with annual food sales of $10 million or more would be required to comply within three years of their effective date, and smaller manufacturers would be required to comply within four years.
Food industry trade groups appeared poised to reject at least some elements of the proposed label, particularly the fact that it focuses solely on nutrients that are consumed in excess and does not also include healthy nutrients such as fiber.
“FDA’s proposed front-of-package nutrition labeling rule appears to be based on opaque methodology and disregard for industry input and collaboration,” Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy at the Consumer Brands Association, said in a statement .
The label’s focus on just three nutrients is “overly simplistic and will not help educate consumers about how to improve their overall nutritional habits,” said Jennifer Hatcher, chief public policy officer of the Food Industry Association trade group. However, she said the group appreciated the ability to voluntarily report calories alongside labeling, as well as “the agency’s decision to maintain a black-and-white FOP labeling system and include at least some quantitative values.”
In contrast, the FDA’s announcement was welcomed by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, which — along with the Association of SNAP Nutrition Education Administrators and the Association of State Public Health Nutritionists — filed a petition in 2022 calling for it urged the authority to introduce mandatory front-of-package labeling.
Nutrition labeling “will provide information that can help people make healthier choices” and is “certainly an improvement over the status quo,” said Eva Greenthal, senior policy scientist at CSPI.
Still, the label’s formatting is already proving controversial, with some health experts, including Greenthal and Roberto, saying there is evidence of a so-called “high-in” warning label – which warns people that a particular product is high in saturated sodium is fats or sugars – is easier for consumers to understand at a glance.
The proposed labeling, which tells people whether the food is high, medium or low in each of the three nutrients, “may be confusing for consumers,” Roberto said. “It’s like stopping at a traffic light that’s red and green at the same time and you don’t know what to do. It’s low in sugar but high in sodium – is it good, is it bad?”
Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, welcomed the FDA’s recently updated definition of “healthy” foods, but said the focus on ingredients like saturated fats and sugars was a “very 1980s” throwback a simpler form of understanding nutritional science.
“You can’t define a food based on just a few nutrients, that leads to errors, frankenfoods and misdirection,” Mozaffarian said, citing as an example the low-fat trend of the 1990s that flooded the U.S. with SnackWells cookies and Olestra potato chips .
If food companies reformulate their products in response to the labels, he said, “you’re going to end up with starchy, artificially sweetened products, not minimally processed foods full of healthy ingredients.”
What the research shows
However, there are some hopeful signs in how the food industry has responded to labeling initiatives in other countries. Manufacturers are often encouraged to lower the amounts of sugar and salt in packaged foods to meet certain nutritional thresholds, according to a 2021 paper published in the Annual Review of Nutrition.
A telling example is Chile, which since 2016 has required foods to display warnings on the front of their packaging if they meet the limit for high levels of sodium, added sugars, saturated fats or calories.
According to a 2020 study, within a year of the law taking effect, the share of packaged foods high in sugar fell from 80% to 60% and the share of foods high in sodium fell from 74% to 27%. In most cases, the new nutrient levels were just below the warning threshold.
The law was less successful in encouraging the food industry to reduce the amount of saturated fat in its products, which the authors suggest may be because saturated fats were technically more difficult to replace. “Saturated fat presents a much bigger challenge, especially when it comes to things like mouthfeel,” Roberto said.
The food industry could also avoid the label’s intended effect by reducing portion sizes, said Montserrat Ganderats-Fuentes, a food policy and public health researcher at Arizona State University. “This could lead to misunderstandings and may not encourage the food industry to reformulate.”
Food companies may be hesitant to reformulate because they fear customers will reject an unfamiliar taste. (See: New Coke.) But on the other hand, labeling systems can encourage companies to develop new, healthier products that meet requirements, Ganderats-Fuentes said. This happened in both the UK and the Netherlands. A study found that 29% of products bearing the Dutch food health seal were introduced after the program was implemented.
Ideally, experts say, policies like these represent a way for the FDA to indirectly influence industry practices while acting within its legal authority. “People don’t even have to change their individual behavior,” Greenthal said. “The food supply is simply becoming healthier, and we all benefit from it.”
STAT’s reporting on chronic health conditions is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated part of a quote from Dariush Mozaffarian about how food companies might reformulate their products in response to proposed nutrition labels.
