{"id":1653,"date":"2014-03-10T09:06:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-09T22:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1653"},"modified":"2014-03-10T09:06:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-09T22:06:31","slug":"with-us-food-labeling-the-times-they-are-a-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.panicola.com\/?p=1653","title":{"rendered":"With US food labeling, the times, they are a changing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Impressive changes in US food labeling.<\/p>\n

Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, \u201cOur 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\u2019s good for your family.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/05\/opinion\/bittman-some-progress-on-eating-and-health.html<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Opinion Pages<\/a>|CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER<\/h3>\n

Some Progress on Eating and Health<\/h1>\n
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Mark Bittman<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For those concerned about eating and health, the glass was more than half full last week; some activists were actually exuberant. First, there was<\/span>evidence<\/a>\u00a0that obesity rates among pre-school children had\u00a0<\/span>fallen significantly<\/a>. Then Michelle Obama announced plans to further\u00a0<\/span>reduce junk food marketing<\/a>\u00a0in public schools. Finally,\u00a0<\/span>she unveiled<\/a>\u00a0the Food and Drug Administration\u2019s proposed revision of the nutrition label that appears on (literally, incredibly) something like 700,000 packaged foods (many of which only pretend to be foods); the new label will include a line for \u201cadded sugars\u201d and makes other important changes, too.<\/span><\/div>\n

If the 43 percent plunge in obesity in young children holds true, it\u2019s 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\u00a0patterns set in childhood<\/a>\u00a0mostly determine eating habits for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

None of this happened by accident, and the lesson is that policy works.<\/p>\n

The further limitations on marketing junk are more complicated. Essentially, producers won\u2019t be able to promote what they already can\u2019t sell (per new Department of Agriculture regulations), meaning that vending machines or scoreboards cannot encourage the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. (Promotion of\u00a0increasingly beleaguered diet sodas<\/a>\u00a0would be allowed.)<\/p>\n

Mrs. Obama\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s\u00a0in a bill sponsored by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro<\/a>\u00a0of Connecticut.)<\/p>\n

Still. It beats calling ketchup a vegetable.<\/p>\n

The label change is huge. Yes: It could be huge-er. Yes: It\u2019s long overdue. Yes: It may be fought by industry and won\u2019t be in place for a long time. And yes: The real key is to be eating whole foods that don\u2019t need to be labeled.<\/p>\n

But by including \u201cadded sugars\u201d on the label, the F.D.A. is siding with those who recognize that\u00a0science shows that added sugars are dangerous.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cThis is an acknowledgment by the agency that sugar is a big problem,\u201d says the former F.D.A. commissioner David Kessler, who presided over the development of the last label change, 20 years ago. \u201cIt will allow the next generation to grow up with far more awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Big Food has long maintained that it doesn\u2019t matter where sugar or indeed calories come from \u2014 that they\u2019re all the same. But \u201cadded sugars\u201d declares the industry\u2019s strategy of pumping up the volume on \u201cpalatability,\u201d 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\u2019t eat a granola bar, but if you know what\u2019s in it you\u2019re less likely to think of it as \u201chealth food.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a couple of other significant changes, including\u00a0<\/span>more realistic \u201cserving sizes\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(a serving of ice cream will now be a more realistic cup instead of a half-cup, for example), the deletion of the \u201ccalories from fat\u201d line, which recognizes that not all fats are \u201cbad,\u201d and some changes in daily recommended values for various nutrients.<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

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\u2019s a victory, and no one on the progressive side of this struggle should see it as otherwise.<\/p>\n

The label is hardly messianic. In fact, the F.D.A. tacitly acknowledges this by offering\u00a0an alternative, stronger label<\/a>, which approaches the kind of \u201ctraffic light\u201d labeling I\u2019ve advocated for, and which\u00a0there\u2019s evidence<\/a>\u00a0to support. The alternative has four sections, including \u201cAvoid Too Much\u201d and \u201cGet Enough\u201d; the first includes added sugars and trans fat, for example, and the second, fiber and vitamin D.<\/p>\n

Michael Taylor, the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine \u2014 and the guy who supervised the new label\u2019s development \u2014 told me that the alternative label is essentially a way to further \u201cstimulate comments.\u201d It may be that it\u2019s also a demonstration of the agency\u2019s will, designed to show industry how threatening things could get so Big Food will swallow the primary label without much complaint.<\/p>\n

Although the ultimate decision is the F.D.A.’s, the Grocery Manufacturers\u2019 Association statement last week\u00a0said in part<\/a>, \u201cIt is critical that any changes are based on the most current and reliable science.\u201d These are, and marketers are going to have a tough time claiming otherwise. In other words, we\u2019re going to see some form of new and stronger label, period.<\/p>\n

Introducing the label, Mrs. Obama said, \u201cOur 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\u2019s good for your family.\u201d<\/p>\n

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: \u201cThat would help people know what\u2019s real food and what\u2019s not.\u201d Michael Pollan also suggests front-of-the-box labeling: \u201cI think the U.K. has the right idea withtheir stoplight panel<\/a>\u00a0on the front of packages; only a small percentage of shoppers get to the nutritional panel on the back.\u201d And the N.Y.U. nutrition professor Marion Nestle (who called this label change \u201ccourageous\u201d) says that \u201cA recommended upper limit for added sugars would help put them in context; I\u2019d like to see that set at 10 percent of calories or 50 grams (200 calories) in a 2,000-calorie diet.\u201d (I wrote about my own\u00a0dream label<\/a>, which includes categories that probably won\u2019t be considered for another 10 years \u2014 if ever \u2014 back in 2012.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019s in that fried chicken at the supermarket deli counter, for example?) or alcohol.<\/p>\n