The Food & Drug Administration (“FDA”) has published a Consumer Update with a reminder regarding the implementation of the new Nutrition Facts label. According to the FDA’s Update, at least 10% of food packaging already carries the new label and therefore consumers are, and will be, seeing two different versions of the Nutrition Facts label on the shelf. As I previously blogged about, the FDA announced in 2016 that there would be changes to the label required for packaged foods starting in 2018. However, the FDA has extended the deadline to comply until 2020 for manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual food sales and 2021 for manufactures with less than $10 million in annual food sales.
In a nutshell, the FDA’s Update describes the new Nutrition Facts label as reflecting “updated scientific information, including our greater understanding of the links between diet and chronic disease” (e.g. obesity and heart disease) and as being “more realistic about how people eat today.” The changes that the FDA has highlighted in its Update are provided verbatim below:
1. The new label makes it easier if you or a member of your family is counting calories by putting the calories, the number of servings, and the serving size in larger, bolder type. We thought it was important to better highlight these numbers because nearly 40 percent of American adults are obese, and obesity is associated with heart disease, stroke, certain cancers, and diabetes.
2. FDA is required to base serving sizes on what people actually eat and drink, so serving size requirements have been adjusted to reflect more recent consumption data. This way, the nutrition information provided for each serving is more realistic. For certain packages that contain more than one serving, you will see nutrition information per serving as well as per package. That means for a pint of ice cream, calories and nutrients are listed for one serving and the whole container.
3. Added sugars are now listed to help you know how much you are consuming. The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends you consume less than 10 percent of calories per day from added sugars. That is because it is difficult to get the nutrients you need for good health while staying within calorie limits if you consume more than 10 percent of your total daily calories from added sugar.
4. Good nutrition means that you are getting the right amount of nutrients for your body to function correctly and to fight chronic diseases like obesity, heart disease, certain cancers, and type II diabetes. The FDA has updated the list of nutrients required on the label to include Vitamin D and Potassium because Americans today do not always get the recommended amounts of these nutrients. Conversely, Vitamins A and C are no longer required, because deficiencies in these vitamins are rare today, but they can be listed by manufacturers voluntarily.
5. The old label lists calories from fats, but the new label does not. The FDA made this change because research shows the type of fat consumed is more important than total fats. For example, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, such as those found in most vegetable oils and nuts, can reduce the risk of developing heart disease when eaten in place of saturated and trans fat.
6. Daily values for nutrients like sodium, dietary fiber, and Vitamin D have been updated and are used to calculate the % Daily Value (DV) that you see on the label. The % DV helps you understand the nutrition information in the context of a daily diet. The footnote at the bottom of the label has changed to better explain the meaning of the % DV.
See FDA Consumer Update, available at https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm620013.htm?utm_campaign=Nutrition%20Facts%20Label%20Reboot%3A%20A%20Tale%20of%20Two%20Labels&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua.
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