I have an editorial with David Ludwig in today’s JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association. NOTE: scroll down to find it). We titled it, “Front-of-package food labels: public health or propaganda?”
We think it’s time for the FDA to consider getting rid of all of them. How’s that for an idea?
Here’s what Forbes thinks about it.
And FoodNavigator.com.
Update, February 25: the Los Angeles Times wrote about it.
The FDA has a new “Dear Industry” letter announcing that it is going to set some rules for those “better-for-you” stickers on the front of junk food packages. Why? “FDA’s intent is to provide standardized, science-based criteria on which FOP [front of package] nutrition labeling must be based.”
What this is about, of course, is all those self-endorsement labels food companies like PepsiCo (Smart Spot), Kraft (Sensible Solution), and many companies collectively (Smart Choices) have been putting on their products.
The companies set up their own nutrition criteria and then applied those criteria to their own products. Surprise! A great many of their products qualified for the “better-for-you” labels.
I’m guessing Smart Choices was the final straw for the FDA. The idea that the Smart Choices check mark could go onto Froot Loops was so astonishing, and the subject of so much ridicule, that the FDA had to act. If nutrition criteria are developed independently, most junk foods would not qualify.
The FDA also says it will be testing how well consumers understand different kinds of package labels. It gives a bunch of examples. Want to know how the FDA is thinking about this? Check out its handy backgrounder, which if nothing else is an excellent introduction to the entire issue of front-of-package labels.
Have a preference about what to use? Write the FDA at this address:
Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. All comments should be identified with the title of the guidance document: Guidance for Industry: Letter Regarding Point of Purchase Food Labeling.
Addendum, October 22: Here are two additional documents to add to the collection. First, a letter to representative Rosa DeLauro responding to her complaint about the Smart Choices program. Second, is a a summary of the talking points used by Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in her press conference on the new FDA initiatives. My conclusion: the FDA is back on the job!
It’s about time the FDA got back on the job. This is in reaction to the self-endorsements food companies have been making on package labels. The way this works is that companies set up their own nutrition criteria and then apply those criteria to their own products. Guess what. Lots of their products qualify for better-for-you labels. Examples: PepsiCo (Smart Spot) and Kraft (Sensible Solution), and now lots of companies working together (Smart Choices). I think Smart Choices was the final straw for the FDA. The idea that its check could go onto Froot Loops made it clear that the bar had to be set higher. Yes, they are suggesting something voluntary, but if the nutrition criteria are honest enough, junk foods won’t qualify.
The FDA has announced its 2025 Priority Deliverables for the Human Food Program.
These cover the microbial and chemical safety of foods, but I am especially interested in what the FDA is and is not doing about nutrition and chronic disease prevention—something mentioned by FDA Commissioner Robert Califf as a priority for American public health.
Based on FDA’s Nutrition Initiatives, the deliverables begin with:
FDA’s Role in Empowering Consumers to Build Nutritious Diets that Support Health and Wellness
Using a risk management approach, we focus our efforts in FY 2025 on labeling and other initiatives to help consumers make more informed choices about the food they eat, and, for those who rely on certain critical foods, such as infant formula, as their sole source of nutrition, we work to make sure those products are safe, properly labeled, and nutritionally sound.
As for the Human Food Program’s priority policy initiatives:
The deliverables do mention diet-related chronic disease in the contexts of sodium and research.
Despite Commissioner Califf’s statements, it looks like the Human Food Program is not particularly interested in chronic disease prevention or policy approaches to improving the environment of food choice.
Instead, its policies put the burden of responsibility on you as an individual to make healthier choices—not to find ways to counter the food industry’s marketing imperatives.
The FDA’s Human Food Program is all about empowering consumers. Good luck with that.
Yes, the FDA is grossly underfunded and handicapped in what it can do, and yes, addressing environmental determinants of chronic disease would encounter opposition from vested interests.
But the FDA is an agency of the Public Health Service. It needs to do better.
The Human Food Program should be taking the lead in addressing Commissioner Califf’s stated concerns
These issues are consistent with the new administration’s Make America Healthy Again campaign. Let’s hope that works.
By a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court struck down the Chevron doctrine, which said that the courts were required to uphold regulatory decisions of federal agencies unless Congress said otherwise. The court majority called the doctrine “fundamentally misguided.”
The decision involves food politics in two ways: (1) the case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, involved fishing, and (2) it has profound implications for food regulations.
(1) The case, as described in SCOTUSblog: “Can fishermen be required to pay for federal monitors? And by the way – should Chevron be overruled?”
Summary: The National Marine Fisheries Service had been requiring “the herring industry to pay for the costs, estimated at $710 per day, associated with carrying observers on board their vessels to collect data about their catches and monitor for overfishing… the agency reimbursed fishermen for the costs of the observers.” Commercial fishing companies, which do not like having observers on board, challenged the Chevron doctrine. Koch Industries paid for the challenge, as part of its long-standing deregulatory agenda.
Significance: businesses objecting to agency regulations can sue the agencies and let judges decide.
The courts (politically appointed judges) can overrule the agencies ‘ public health and safety regulations.
(2) Implications for food, nutrition, and public health regulations
The decision is widely interpreted as putting food and nutrition policies at grave risk, particularly those of the FDA. Here is a preliminary list of what is at stake.
Comment: There are undoubtedly more regulations in play that I haven’t thought of. Food companies (like businesses in general) do not like being regulated.—too cumbersome, too expensive, too intrusive, too limiting on profits.
Now, a company fviewing any of these rules as inconvenient can take the FDA to court. Doing so:
This decision has been applauded by the business community.
For those of us wanting diets to be healthier and more sustainable, it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
I’ll bet we won’t have to wait long for the first cases to be filed.
A recent opinion piece in the Washington Post explains why the FDA should establish front-of-package nutrition labeling here and now: These countries are doing nutrition labels the right way
Christina Roberto, Alyssa Moran, and Kelly Brownell contrast the “stop signs you’ll see in Mexico, the Nutri-Score system used in France, or the Health Star Ratings in New Zealand” with the current lack of a system like those in the United States.
The only thing standing in the way: the food industry. It favors a label that displays grams or milligrams of key nutrients along with percent Daily Values — much like the Nutrition Facts Labelcurrently on the back or side of packages. ..By using symbols, colors and simple language, front-of-package labels adopted by other countries have educated people about what’s in their food, helped them make healthier choices and even encouraged companies to reduce salt and sugar in their products.
And here’s Fortune on the same topic, especially Nutri-Score.
This makes me think it’s time to review what’s happening in Europe with Nutri-Score. I’ve written about this system previously, most recently here and about Its founder, Serge Hercberg’s, fights with the food industry here.
As a reminder, Nutri-Score accounts for nutrients but also sugar, salt, and saturated fat, in a composite grade A (eat) to E (avoid).
The food industry hates it. For example, an article by authors with ties to industry argues that there is no independent evidence to support the value of Nutri-Score. This induced Hercberg et al to rebut those points.
In response to some of these criticisms, the Nutri-Score team is updating its algorithm to respond to concerns about ultra-processing, among other matters. See: Nutri-Score 2023 Update in Nature Food.
And despite the arguments, support for Nutri-Score is growing. Authors not connected to Nutri-Score recommend it over other types of labeling for adoption by 27 EU nations. See: Establishing an EU-wide front-of-pack nutrition label: Review of options and model-based evaluation. Obesity Reviews, 07 February 2024. https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.13719
Nutri-Score is currently used in seven European countries. It is backed by the European Public Health Association and the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The food industry can complain all it wants, I’m guessing Nutri-Score is here to stay. It may not capture all ultra-processed foods, but it comes close and revising the design like this should help solve that problem.
Center for Science in the Public Interest is campaigning for mandatory front-of-package labeling—like these.
Here’s what you need to know about the campaign:
Guess what! The food industry opposes this kind of labeling. A lot.
Why? Because it might discourage purchase of ultra-processed junk foods. That, after all, is its point.
Really, I can’t make this stuff up.
Thanks to Jim Krieger of HealthyFoodAmerica.org for sending me to Food Navigator-USA: Post launches the first-ever cereal designed to promote sleep.
A cereal meant to be consumed at bedtime? I wanted it for my cereal box collection, and there hasn’t been a good one like this for a long time since the FDA started discouraging ridiculous health claims. I went straight to the Ithaca Walmart and scored a box.
Sweet Dreams, the box tells you, is “part of a healthy sleep routine.”
The front-of-package claims:
- Made with whole grains
- Supports natural melatonin production with zinc, folic acid, and B vitamins
- Excellent source of Vitamin E for neuroprotection
The back-of-package claims:
- Sleep…We want to help you enjoy it. With delicious wholesome ingredients, curated vitamins and minerals, and a specially formulated night-time herbal blend, our dreamy cereal is part of a healthy sleep routine.
- Made with a night-time herbal blend containing a touch of lavender and chamomile
I looked up the website:
For 130 million American adults, a good night’s sleep is elusive. You deserve good sleep, and we want to help you enjoy it! So, we made Sweet Dreams cereal, the first ready-to-eat cereal specially designed to support a good sleep routine and a fresh start to the next day…Available in Blueberry Midnight and Honey Moonglow flavors, make Sweet Dreams cereal a part of your bedtime routine and enable a better sleep cycle while satisfying those nighttime food cravings.
Comment:
I hardly know where to begin: “curated vitamins and minerals”? “Supports natural melatonin production”?
This last is a structure/function claim like those for supplements. It requires only the barest hint of scientific substantiation.
Reader, I ate it.
The cereal is crunchy, with occasionally visible almonds, but is cloyingly sweet (to my taste): A cup of cereal has nearly a tablespoon (13 grams) of added sugar– 24% of a day’s total sugar allowance.
No wonder it’s so sweet. Sugars appear seven times on the ingredient list.
Whole Grain Wheat, Rice, Cane Sugar, Almonds, Whole Grain Rolled Oats, Canola and/or Soybean Oil, Flavor Clusters (Sugar, Corn Syrup, Degermed Corn, Palm Oil, Natural Flavor, Cocoa (processed with alkali)(for color), Blueberry and Carrot Concentrates (for color)), Salt, Honey, Corn Syrup, Barley Malt Extract, Molasses, Tocopherols (Vitamin E) to maintain freshness, Natural Flavor.
Post must be trying to sell more cereal. Eat cereal at night? Well, if you have sleep problems I suppose you can give it a try.
I ate this cereal in the morning. It did not make me feel sleepy.
*******
For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156. Use code 21W2240 at checkout.
The Food and Drink Federation of Scotland is lobbying the government to stop proposals to restrict promotion of HFSS snacks, ostensibly because of inflation.
The industry would like the government to “help ensure the future success of our vital industry by investing in productivity and supporting food and drink businesses on the journey to Net Zero.”
Spain’s new dietary guidelines recommend limits on meat consumption: a maximum of 3 servings/week of meat, prioritising poultry and rabbit meat and minimising the consumption of processed meat.”
This is a big deal because Spain currently has the highest consumption of red meat in Europe.
Scientists and health professionals for Nutri-Score, the front-of-package labeling scheme that originated in France, are trying to get it accepted throughout the EU.
They are collecting signatures on a petition to the Europen Commission.
In an email, Serge Hercberg, the originator of Nutri-Score, writes
The objective of this Group aims to defend science and public health against lobbies and to remind the EC that Nutri-Score has been the subject of numerous studies following a rigorous scientific process justifying its adoption…The lobbies, totally denying science, have managed in recent months to spread at European level their false arguments through platforms, think tanks, associations, web media, lobbying agencies and events organised by permanent representations of certain states to EU.
He invites experts to support this effort. Information is on the website here.
You can sign on through the contact page. The more, the better he says.
*******
For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156. Use code 21W2240 at checkout.
