The United States plans a major overhaul of the way packaged foods are
labeled, the Food and Drug Administration announced on Friday. Serving sizes
will be adjusted to reflect how much people actually eat, and for the first
time labels will list added sugars.
These are
the first significant changes since the Nutrition Facts label was introduced
more than 20 years ago. They come as an increasing number of Americans battle
obesity, diabetes and heart disease and will affect roughly 800,000 products
from Coca-Cola and ice-cream to soup and spaghetti sauce.
Speaking
at a health summit in Washington, first lady Michelle Obama said she was "thrilled"
about the new label and said she believes it is going to make "a real
difference in providing families across the country the information they need
to make healthy choices." Her "Let's Move!" initiative aims to
increase the health of young people.
Manufacturers
have until July 2018 to comply with the new rule. Small businesses with fewer
than $10 million in annual sales have an additional year to comply. The FDA,
which first proposed the rule in 2014, estimated at the time that the cost to
industry of updating the labels would be about $2 billion.
The
Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the world's biggest food
and drink companies, said the changes were "timely," as diets and
eating patterns have changed dramatically over the past two decades.
"Food
and beverage manufacturers have responded by creating more than 30,000
healthier product choices since 2002," Dr. Leon Bruner, GMA's chief
science officer, said in a statement.
Under the
new rules, companies will have to provide details on the amount of added sugar
such as corn syrup and white and brown sugar.
The Sugar
Association, which represents U.S. sugar cane farmers, refiners, sugar beet
farmers and processors, said it was "disappointed" at the requirement
to list added sugars on the label and said the FDA had not demonstrated a
scientific link between sugar and disease.
Information
about calories from fat will be removed because research shows the type of fat
is more important than the amount, the FDA said.
The new
rules require serving sizes on the label to reflect what, on average, consumers
actually eat. About 20 percent of all package labels will be adjusted, the FDA
said. Some, such as ice-cream will be adjusted upwards, while others, such as
yogurt, will be adjusted downwards.
"What
and how much people eat and drink has changed since the last serving size
requirements were published in 1993," the agency said.
HOW WILL
CONSUMERS REACT?
It was
unclear how much the new label will actually impact consumer behavior.
Professor
Jeremy Kees, a nutrition label expert at Villanova University School of
Business who has consulted for both the FDA and industry, said he believes the
impact will be "relatively small" because the information is on the
back of the package.
"I
think front of pack labeling has more potential to have a bigger impact on
consumers," he said.
Some
changes have already been made, analysts say.
"Carbonated
soft drinks have been on the decline before any of this happened," said
Darren Seifer, an analyst at The NPD Group, a market research company. "It
might not make it exponentially greater, but it may help sustain it."
The
largest U.S. chocolate maker, The Hershey Company (HSY.N), said it "will work diligently to make
the necessary updates to our Nutrition Facts labels as requested by the
FDA."
In the
United States more than one-third of adults and about 17 percent of youth aged
2 to 19 are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Obesity-related
conditions include heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of
cancer, some of the leading causes of preventable death. The estimated annual
medical cost of obesity in the U.S. was $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars,
according to Centers for Disease Control.
The FDA
estimated the cost to industry of updating the labels at about $2 billion and
the benefit to consumers at between $20 billion to $30 billion.
(Additional
reporting by Dipika Jain, Sruthi Ramakrishnan, Melissa Fares and Chris
Prentice; editing by Phil Berlowitz and Cynthia Osterman)
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