Why Let Junk Wear a Cloak of Health? : Food labeling: Processors resist a law that would forbid misleading health claims.

The Food and Drug Administration promises that new user-friendly food labels will be coming to grocery-store shelves soon. But that day may be a long way off if food-industry lobbyists and former Reagan Administration officials get their way.

The FDA is working diligently to improve food labels. In compliance with the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, the agency has proposed sweeping new requirements that specify everything from the definition of “light” foods to when a label can claim that a food reduces the risk of cancer.

The food industry, recognizing the need for government to create a level competitive playing field, at first supported the new law in exchange for a congressional ban on tougher state and local labeling requirements. But fractures have appeared in this support and some companies, represented by the National Food Processors Assn., the Grocery Manufacturers of America and other trade groups, are trying to weaken the rules before they go into effect. The groups’ biggest target is restrictions on nutrition claims.

Under the new FDA rules, which so far seem unaffected by the USDA decision, claims such as “No Cholesterol” would have to be qualified by statements regarding the total fat content of the food and meet other standards. In opposing such common-sense rules, manufacturers are being aided by a clique of former Reagan Administration officials trumpeting an unfettered free-market approach to nutrition claims.

For example, John Calfee and Paul Rubin, both former Federal Trade Commission officials, claim that if the government refrains from issuing tough regulations, consumers will learn more. They maintain that while no one company would tell consumers the whole truth about any of its products, different companies would tell different parts of the truth. For example, even though a label on a high-fat food such as cooking oil might truthfully, yet misleadingly, claim “No cholesterol,” consumers would learn from the labels of competing products that health authorities recommend eating fewer high-fat foods.

What really happens is that people, being human beings and not economic models, are duped. Surveys by the FDA demonstrate, for instance, that about 40% of consumers believe that a food labeled “No cholesterol” is also low in saturated fat.

The arguments against the FDA’s proposals bring on an odd sense of deja vu: Throughout the 1980s, the food industry and conservative economists said that the marketplace would cleanse itself of deceptive claims. The failure of that approach--even Business Week magazine proclaimed on a 1989 cover that “Health Claims for Foods are Becoming Ridiculous”--led to the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. So why is the debate continuing?

The answer is that a multitude of food manufacturers want to keep their fatty, salty and sugary foods looking as nutritious as possible for as long as possible. The needs of those companies coincide with those of individuals who are still trying to vindicate the policies of the Administration they served during the 1980s.

The food industry is at a crossroads. Hopefully it will choose to allow the government to create a level playing field on which competition leads to true improvements in processed foods. Unfortunately, it looks like the industry is opting for a repeat of the 1980s, in which the law of the supermarket jungle substituted for sound public policy and companies engaged in a free-for-all of exaggerated and often misleading claims. The American Meat Institute has already persuaded the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for regulating meat and poultry products, to delay its proposed nutrition-labeling rules until mid-1994, a year’s delay from the original proposal.

Yes, the food industry associations are bending the ears of the people in charge. Consumers, if they really want honest, informative food labels, will have to do the same: contact their congressional representatives and senators, as well as the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, to demand that the government’s labeling proposals not be weakened. The public should be able to expect government to do the right thing, but the fact is that our system won’t work as it should unless we consumers make some noise of our own.