HEALTH WATCH : Truth in Labeling

Consumers baffled by confusing nutritional claims on the foods they buy will benefit from the sweeping changes in food labeling unveiled last week by the federal government.

The improved standards call for uniform information about serving sizes, and they define such previously elusive terms as light , fresh and natural.

The regulations, announced by the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture, will affect about 17,000 food processors and will require changes in more than 250,000 product labels. Meat and poultry are exempted.

The cost to food manufacturers over the next 20 years is expected to be $1.6 billion. That means shoppers will likely pay slightly more at the checkout counter.

However, the government’s insistance that consumers get more precise dietary information about fats, cholesterol, salt and sugar will enable people to make better decisions about what they eat.

The new rules also spell out which products can carry specific disease-fighting claims. The rules will be particularly advantageous to people who are required by their physician to modify their diets because they have diabetes, hypertension or heart disease. For them, the more accurate food labels won’t be just a matter of convenience--they could be a matter of life and death.

The FDA has not completed all its food-labeling rules. Nevertheless, this is an important first step; these are the most significant revisions in food labeling in the last half-century.