The FDA plans changes to make the information more useful for consumers. But some groups want to go even further.
Health experts believe the way to get people to eat better is to tell them which foods are healthy and which ones aren’t. Nutrition facts panels—the little info-boxes on the back of food packages that outline calorie, fat, sugar and vitamin counts—are supposed to do that, but research has found that many people don’t look at them, and even when they do, they don’t help.
The Food and Drug Administration has proposed a revision to the existing facts panel, which has been standard on most food products since 1994. The changes include a redesign to make calorie information more prominent, as well as a change as to what is considered a single serving size to reflect the growth in the portion sizes people eat in the last two decades. The hope is that the changes will reflect the latest nutrition science and help people make smarter choices as the U.S. faces an obesity problem.
The FDA’s current facts box (left) and its proposed replacement (right), which is intended to help people make smarter choices.FDA
Some researchers say the proposed labels are an improvement but still don’t make clear to consumers what the net value of a food could be. So they are devising alternative approaches. Here are some other ideas for a better label.
NuVal Scores
The NuVal Nutritional Scoring System, designed by medical and nutrition experts led by David Katz, chairman of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, grades food based on a scale of 1 to 100.
The score is calculated based on positives, such as protein, calcium and other nutrient content, and negatives like sugar and cholesterol. Consumers who read the current nutritional labels must determine the overall health value of a food based on disparate pieces of information about nutrient content. NuVal instead boils all the information down so consumers can consider just the final score. “What the [FDA] is giving people is a map and a compass, and some instructions to use them,” Dr. Katz says. “NuVal gives them GPS.” Nearly 2,000 supermarkets currently place NuVal labels on their shelves.
Traffic Light
The traffic light rating system, developed by the Food Standards Agency in the U.K., assigns a red, amber or green background to the saturated-fat, sugar and salt categories on food labels. A food high in sugar but low in fat would be marked red for sugar and green for the fat category, giving consumers the ability to make their decision based on which they care about more, or by comparing the totals to those on other similar foods.
PHOTO: FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY
Guiding Stars
The Guiding Stars nutrition labels, developed in 2006, feature a blue human figure with one, two or three gold stars floating above its head to indicate the food’s health value. The more stars, the more nutritious the food.
The system assigns stars based on an algorithm that considers vitamins, minerals, fiber, whole grains and other positive factors against negatives, such as added sugars, trans and saturated fat and cholesterol listed on the nutrition label. More than 1,500 U.S. supermarkets assign these labels to foods, Guiding Stars says.
