FDA Delays the Rollout of the New Nutrition Fact Labels

In a victory for big food, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) announced it would delay the rollout of the new Nutrition Fact label.

The updated label was first unveiled in 2014 by then First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her plan to tackle obesity in the country. In its first major overhaul in over two decades, the new labels were meant to help consumers make more informed decisions about the food they eat.

The revised panel highlights the calories in a larger font. It also updated serving sizes to be based on the amounts of food and drink that people typically consume rather than how much they should consume. But a particular point of contention with new label is the requirement for food companies to call out added sugars versus natural ones as well as provide a daily percent value.

Long considered a staple in food processing, sugar is often used as a preservative and to mask naturally occurring bitter tastes. A report found that out of 600,000 items found in grocery stores, 80 percent contained added sugar.

As sugar laden food and beverages have been implicated in the obesity crisis, there have been calls by organizations like the American Heart Association to limit sugar intake. But food companies counter that a gram of sugar is all the same whether it is naturally occurring or added.

Originally, companies were supposed to be in compliance by July 2018 and manufacturers with less than $10 million in annual food sales had an additional year to make the changes. But in recent months the Grocery Manufacturers Association and other industry trade groups have lobbied for a delay saying that the cost associated with a two-year compliance deadline could be as high as $4.6 billion.

In a statement on its website the FDA explained its reasoning for the delay: “The framework for the extension will be guided by the desire to give industry more time and decrease costs, balanced with the importance of minimizing the transition period during which consumers will see both the old and the new versions of the label in the marketplace.” A new deadline for compliance has yet to be determined.

A recent study by the smart label company Label Insight found that 67 percent of consumers believe it is challenging to make sure that a food product meets their needs by looking at the package label. And nearly half of consumers consider themselves to be “not informed at all about the product” after reading the product’s label.

“There is a huge gap between the type of information provided on food packaging, and the type of information consumers need to make informed purchasing decisions,” said Kira Karapetian, vice president of marketing, Label Insight. “A lot of consumers are saying they are trying to be more health conscious, but the label is actually prohibiting them from doing it.”