Guidelines Aim to Clarify Food Labeling

Four months after he pledged to end the “Tower of Babel” in grocery stores, Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan on Thursday offered a set of uniform definitions to clarify and standardize labeling language on virtually every food product sold in the United States.

The 400-page proposal, to be published next week in the Federal Register, updates and expands the lists of nutrients that should or should not be identified on labels and clarifies some previously confusing terms, such as “cholesterol-free” and “reduced-cholesterol,” which manufacturers have used at whim.

Under the new rules, “cholesterol-free” would mean that a food product had less than 2 milligrams of cholesterol per serving and less than 5 grams of fat--no more than 2 grams of which could be saturated fat. “Low-cholesterol” would mean less than 20 milligrams per serving and “reduced-cholesterol” could be applied only to foods containing 75% less cholesterol than the basic product.

Food and Drug Administration officials said that in the coming months they will produce two further detailed proposals. The first will set precise standards for terms such as “high in fiber” and “lite,” and the second will set out guidelines as to how labels should be designed.

The FDA’s intention to replace the largely voluntary, 17-year-old labeling system with updated, mandatory guidelines comes at a time of increasing confusion about the nutritional contents of foods. At least two bills have been introduced in Congress to authorize the rewriting of labeling guidelines.

The FDA proposals are very close to what Congress is considering and what some industry and consumer groups have endorsed.

For example, they require that the amounts of thiamine, riboflavin and niacin be dropped from labels and that four new food components be quantified: saturated fat, calories from fat, cholesterol and fiber.

“Thiamine, riboflavin, niacin are primarily connected with deficiency diseases that are virtually nonexistent in the U.S. public,” said F. Edward Scarbrough, acting director of the FDA’s Office of Nutrition and Food Sciences.

The proposals also standardize serving sizes for 159 food categories. Under current rules, manufacturers can set whatever serving size they wish, and this has led to complaints about misleading claims. For example, Sara Lee “lite” cheesecake is advertised as “only 200 calories per serving,” yet the major difference between Sara Lee’s low calorie cheesecake and regular cheesecake is that the serving described on the “lite” product package is smaller.

While praising the general thrust of Sullivan’s proposals, several consumer and industry groups said the new guidelines fall short in several key areas.

For example, some consumer groups said, the rules would not prevent food manufacturers switching from messages regulated by the FDA to ones that were not.

Bruce Silverglade of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said: “As soon as it defines one set of terms, like ‘high fiber,’ food companies may come up with something like ‘fiber rich’ and evade the agency’s official designation.”

One food-labeling bill, sponsored by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) would prohibit using undefined label terminology without FDA approval.