Do you find food labels to be confusing? Do you wonder how much of the sugar in your yogurt comes from milk and how much comes from the sugar bowl? Do you think portion sizes on packaged foods should be more realistic? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can probably understand how excited many of my nutrition colleagues and I were last May, when the Food and Drug Administration revealed the new nutrition facts panel, or NFP, on packaged foods. After all, it’s been 20 years since our label has had a makeover and, after two decades, our concept of what is or isn’t healthy has been highly debated.
[See: 8 Food Trends Nutrition Experts Pray Will Never Return.]
Since the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 passed, the NFP has been an essential tool to help consumers make educated food choices at the supermarket. But unfortunately, this panel has a reputation of being difficult to understand, or often simply ignored, which thwarts its usefulness. Because interpreting the breadth of information on the nutrition facts panel isn’t as intuitive as many nutrition professionals would like, the proposed changes in 2016 had us feeling hopeful that food shopping would become less stressful. Here’s a recap of what that label would include:
— Bolder Calorie Counts and Realistic Serving Sizes: Products wearing nutrition facts panels displaying unrealistic serving sizes — think “one-quarter of a muffin” or “one olive” — appear on products that are probably lining your pantry shelves as we speak. But who eats one-quarter of a muffin? The new label guidelines urge manufacturers to use more realistic serving sizes, like one muffin, while also highlighting calorie content in bigger and bolder text.
[See: Should You Count Calories or Track Macronutrients?]
— Dual Columns: For certain multi-serving food products, such as pints of ice cream and 3-ounce bags of chips, that could be consumed in one or multiple sittings, new labels will include two columns: one indicating per serving and one indicating per package. With dual column labels available, people will be able to easily understand how many calories and nutrients they are getting if they eat or drink the entire package at one time.
— Details on Sugar: The labels we now have do not differentiate between natural sugars, such as those found in milk, yogurt, fruit and fruit juice, and added sugars, such as cane sugar, glucose, organic cane juice, syrups and high-fructose corn syrup. The new label will finally separate these two groups, so that people can better cut down on added sugars without demonizing sugars found in healthy foods.
— Updated Daily Values: Daily values are reference amounts of nutrients to consume or not exceed, and they’re used to calculate the percent of daily value that manufacturers include on the label. But current labels aren’t necessarily consistent with the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations and the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The new label then might decrease the DV of sodium, for example, from 2,400 to 2,300 milligrams.
— New Vitamins and Minerals: The Dietary Guidelines for Americans report shows that most Americans don’t get enough potassium and vitamin D, which are often referred to as “shortfall nutrients.” These nutrients may be called out on the new label, and listing vitamins A and C will become voluntary.
Such changes could be coming to a nutrition facts panel near you as soon as 2018. But even though these regulations were passed in 2015 and 2016, some regulatory guidance documents that accompany these new regulations still require signing, and that’s where it gets sticky. Recently,yAt this point, it seems we’re not certain of Trump’s stand on food policy, but we do know he announced a regulatory freeze that may affect the improved nutrition facts panel. Here’s how:
— The regulatory freeze may impact how the new nutrition facts label rule is enforced. The compliance deadline for when companies need to implement the new label may be delayed from the current date of July 2018.
— The enactment of the panel’s rule regarding how fiber and added sugar will be handled may be up for debate.
— The living conditions of animals may change under the USDA’s organic program.
— According to Center for Science in the Public Interest, there is some concern that FDA funding will diminish under the Trump administration, which may affect how most food policy and food safety outreach in the United States is governed. Although the Trump team has not updated its position, an early position paper did call the current quantity of funding “overkill.”
[See: 7 Ways Grocery Shopping Will Change in 2017.]
Only time will tell what changes will occur in our food policies during the Trump administration. For now, what we do know is that the future of the new nutrition facts label is unclear. Many of my nutrition colleagues and I hope that the changes proposed under the past administration remain in order to best help consumers make healthy food choices and consume safe, nutritious food.
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How Will Trump’s Policies Affect Your Grocery Shopping? originally appeared on usnews.com
