All About Food: Will update to nutrition labels help or hurt?

The Food and Drug Administration will be making a major change in its nutrition labeling of packaged foods after 20 years of using the same data.

The new label is expected in July of 2018, and the food manufacturers will have until that July 26 to redesign their labels. The exception: Companies that earn less than $10 million annually will have another year to comply.

First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled the label, saying, “You will no longer need a microscope, a calculator or a degree in nutrition to figure out if the food you’re buying is actually good for our kids.”

Added sugars will be clearly labeled. Food manufacturers have been adding sweeteners, which have no nutritional value, to make their products taste better. Naturally occurring sugars are much healthier and can be found in things like fruit and milk.

“Calories from fat” is being deleted, reflecting scientific research showing that “the type of fat is more important than the amount,” according to the FDA website.

The FDA no longer demands that food companies list vitamins A and C because most people are not deficient in these, but vitamin D and potassium will be listed because they are important as food additives, especially if people are lacking them.

Serving sizes will also be changed to more accurately depict the amount that people usually eat and drink. Ice cream, for example, will be changed from half a cup to two thirds of a cup. Canned soup will go from one cup to two, and a bottle of soda from 8 ounces to 20.

New labeling guidelines may lead to reformulations of some 800,000 products. Shoppers these days like to see those nutrition facts.

However, there is another side to this dialogue. With the new labels reflecting how much people actually consume, could this increase how much food we eat? The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 says serving sizes must be based on what people actually eat, not on what people should be eating. It seems that serving sizes have not been updated in 20 years and the average American portions have ballooned, as have waistlines.

One study cited in the Washington Post says researchers asked consumers what “serving size” on the nutrition label refers to, and less than 20% correctly said it refers to the amount of the product consumed in one sitting. Most thought it recommended how much food people should eat.

In another study, people were given the old nutrition label and another group was given the new one. When given an opportunity to eat cookies, the ones with the updated label consumed 41% more cookies.

So we are left with the question: Will the new labeling help people eat more healthfully? Only time will tell.

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TERRY MARKOWITZ was in the gourmet food and catering business for 20 years. She can be reached for comments or questions at emarkos755@gmail.com.