FDA Plans to Require Front-of-Pack Labels. Hooray?
In the midst of lot of news about obesity this week came a pretty big announcement from FDA. The agency is proposing to require front-of-pack nutrition labels for most packaged foods in the U.S.
FDA is optimistic. Food policy advocates are cheering. This will be a big opportunity to reduce obesity says FDA:
The U.S. faces an ever-growing epidemic of preventable diet-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. Improving nutrition offers one of the greatest opportunities for reducing these and other chronic illnesses and premature death. The FDA helps to support nutritious eating patterns in part by providing information so that consumers can identify healthier food choices.
Skeptics Are Less Certain
Xaq Frohlich is a history professor at Auburn University who wrote From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age. He is not so sure that this will be a home run:
“It’s really hard to create the perfect label system that doesn’t create problems and unintended consequences. There are good faith actors in the food industry who really use these labels to make their products healthier, but there are also a lot of bad faith actors who will tweak their processed food to look good on the label, but in fact, it won’t meet the spirit of what the F.D.A. and public health experts are seeking.”
Effective for Altering Choices
Let’s be clear. There is little room for doubt that front-of-pack nutrition labels will nudge consumers toward choosing products that meet the current understanding of foods that are healthier: Less sugar, salt, and saturated fat.
There’s good experimental evidence for this.
Effective for Prompting Reformulation
There is also good reason to believe that the requirement for these labels serves to prompt food companies to reformulate their products to make them appear to be “healthy.”
What’s not to like if we can nudge both consumers and marketers toward “healthier” packaged foods?
For Better Health? No Evidence
There is only one missing piece – evidence that all of this nudging yields better health. In a recent review, Lorenzo Maria Donini and colleagues highlighted a key fact:
“It remains unseen as to whether front-of-pack nutrition labels affect health status improvement.”
In fact, if you look at what happened in Chile, it becomes apparent that we cannot be sure this will do anything for health. Chile implemented strict requirements for front of pack labeling eight years ago. No effect on obesity has been evident.
The problem is simple. Presuming that this move will serve to improve health relies on an assumption that has proven false over and over again – that obesity is the result of poor choices. That nudging people to make better choices will fix the problem.
Let’s say it loud and all together: Obesity is not a problem of bad choices. It is problem of biological susceptibility, triggered by a complex web of environmental factors. Individual foods don’t cause it and fiddling with individual foods doesn’t fix it.
Effective obesity prevention will require a more complete systems approach. Not ineffectual baby steps based on false assumptions. We must address the whole of our food environment, our physical environment, social stress, and chemical exposures that are working synergistically to promote obesity – if we genuinely want to alter its prevalence.
Click here, here, and here for more on this new proposal from FDA.
Goldfish Does Chips, photograph of a grocery display by Ted Kyle / Conscienhealth
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January 18, 2025
January 18, 2025 at 9:17 am, Allen Browne said:
Maybe I will stay – “there is intelligent life down here”
Let’s say it loud and altogether: Obesity is not a problem of bad choices. It is problem of biological susceptibility, triggered by a complex web of environmental factors. Individual foods don’t cause it and fiddling with individual foods doesn’t fix it.
Thanks, Ted
Allen