Impressive changes in US food labeling.
Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, “Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it’s good for your family.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/opinion/bittman-some-progress-on-eating-and-health.html
The Opinion Pages|CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER
Some Progress on Eating and Health
If the 43 percent plunge in obesity in young children holds true, it’s fantastic news, a tribute to the improved Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which encourages the consumption of fruits and vegetables; to improved nutrition guidelines; to a slight reduction in the marketing of junk to children; and probably to the encouragement of breast-feeding. Practically everyone in this country who speaks English or Spanish has heard or read the message that junk food is bad for you, and that patterns set in childhood mostly determine eating habits for a lifetime.
None of this happened by accident, and the lesson is that policy works.
The further limitations on marketing junk are more complicated. Essentially, producers won’t be able to promote what they already can’t sell (per new Department of Agriculture regulations), meaning that vending machines or scoreboards cannot encourage the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. (Promotion of increasingly beleaguered diet sodas would be allowed.)
Mrs. Obama’s tendency to see the reformulation of packaged foods as an important goal is on display here: Snacks sold in schools (both in vending machines and out) will have to meet one of four requirements, like containing at least 50 percent whole grain or a quarter-cup of fruits or vegetables.
These proposed rules are better than nothing but filled with loopholes. Manufacturers will quickly figure out how to meet the new standards, and the improvements, though not insignificant, will not go far in teaching kids that the best snack is an apple or a handful of nuts. (One way to really clobber junk food would be to prevent companies from taking tax deductions on the marketing of unhealthy foods, a move that’s in a bill sponsored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.)
Still. It beats calling ketchup a vegetable.
The label change is huge. Yes: It could be huge-er. Yes: It’s long overdue. Yes: It may be fought by industry and won’t be in place for a long time. And yes: The real key is to be eating whole foods that don’t need to be labeled.
But by including “added sugars” on the label, the F.D.A. is siding with those who recognize that science shows that added sugars are dangerous. “This is an acknowledgment by the agency that sugar is a big problem,” says the former F.D.A. commissioner David Kessler, who presided over the development of the last label change, 20 years ago. “It will allow the next generation to grow up with far more awareness.”
Big Food has long maintained that it doesn’t matter where sugar or indeed calories come from — that they’re all the same. But “added sugars” declares the industry’s strategy of pumping up the volume on “palatability,” making ketchup, yogurt and granola bars, for example, as sweet and high-calorie as jam, ice cream and Snickers. Added sugar turns sparkling water into soda and food-like objects into candy. Added sugar, if you can forgive the hyperbole, is the enemy. This is not to say you shouldn’t eat a granola bar, but if you know what’s in it you’re less likely to think of it as “health food.”
Mrs. Obama, who is sometimes seen (by me among many others) as overly industry-friendly, was behind the push for these changes, or at least highly supportive of them. And she deserves credit: It’s a victory, and no one on the progressive side of this struggle should see it as otherwise.
The label is hardly messianic. In fact, the F.D.A. tacitly acknowledges this by offering an alternative, stronger label, which approaches the kind of “traffic light” labeling I’ve advocated for, and which there’s evidence to support. The alternative has four sections, including “Avoid Too Much” and “Get Enough”; the first includes added sugars and trans fat, for example, and the second, fiber and vitamin D.
Michael Taylor, the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine — and the guy who supervised the new label’s development — told me that the alternative label is essentially a way to further “stimulate comments.” It may be that it’s also a demonstration of the agency’s will, designed to show industry how threatening things could get so Big Food will swallow the primary label without much complaint.
Although the ultimate decision is the F.D.A.’s, the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association statement last week said in part, “It is critical that any changes are based on the most current and reliable science.” These are, and marketers are going to have a tough time claiming otherwise. In other words, we’re going to see some form of new and stronger label, period.
Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, “Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it’s good for your family.”
This label moves in that direction, but it could be much more powerful. Kessler would like to see a pie chart on the front of the package: “That would help people know what’s real food and what’s not.” Michael Pollan also suggests front-of-the-box labeling: “I think the U.K. has the right idea withtheir stoplight panel on the front of packages; only a small percentage of shoppers get to the nutritional panel on the back.” And the N.Y.U. nutrition professor Marion Nestle (who called this label change “courageous”) says that “A recommended upper limit for added sugars would help put them in context; I’d like to see that set at 10 percent of calories or 50 grams (200 calories) in a 2,000-calorie diet.” (I wrote about my own dream label, which includes categories that probably won’t be considered for another 10 years — if ever — back in 2012.)
What else is wrong? The label covers a lot of food, but it has no effect on restaurant food, takeout, most prepared food sold in bulk (do you have any idea what’s in that fried chicken at the supermarket deli counter, for example?) or alcohol.
The Obama administration and the F.D.A. have made a couple of moves here that might be categorized as bold, but they could have done so three or four years ago; these are regulations that can be built upon, and do not require Congressional approval. But by the time they’re in effect it may be too late for this administration to take them to the next level.
In short, it’s not a case of too-little-too-late but one of “it could’ve been more and happened sooner.”
But that’s looking backward instead of forward. If we see a decline in obesity rates, more curbs on food marketing and greater transparency in packaged food, that’s progress. Let’s be thankful for it, then get back to work pushing for more.