FDA’s Proposed Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labels Could Create Confusion

FDA recently released a proposed rule to require front of pack “nutrition info” labels with the aim of making it easy for consumers to recognize foods that have healthier levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar.

Here’s one issue that caught my eye and which I expect to the topic of public comments: the nutrition info label would include designations of “high,” “medium,” and “low” levels of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars based on the amount of those nutrients in a serving of the product, rather than based on the amounts of the nutrients in a standardized reference amount for the food.

This could cause confusion and weird results, particularly for products labeled as a single serving.

First, this is not how FDA defines “high” and “low” nutrient levels for purposes of nutrient content claims. Ordinarily, “high” and “low” are defined based on the amount of the nutrient (by weight or percent daily value) in the reference amount of the food that FDA has defined by regulation. The reference amount of a food is not necessarily the same as the serving size in the nutrition facts panel.

While reference amounts are uniform across food categories, serving sizes are not. They vary depending on the size of the package. For example, a package of snacks containing any amount under 60 grams has to be labeled as one serving. For same snack in a package of 60 grams or more, the serving size will be about 30 grams.

So one brand’s single serving bag of chips might be labeled “high” in sodium, for example, while another brand that puts fewer chips in their single serving bag might have “medium” sodium even if both products had the same amount of sodium per ounce.

FDA hopes that manufacturers will reformulate to avoid labeling their products as having “high” amounts of saturated fat, sodium, or added sugars. But in some cases, a manufacturer could simply avoid the “high” designation by putting less of the product in a single serving container.

Even more confusing, the exact same product from the same brand in different size packages could have different designations of “high,” “medium,” and “low” because the labeled serving sizes are different.

This rule is just a proposal at this point; it may be very different if and when it is finalized. And you can influence the rulemaking by submitting comments. Reach out to us if you would like help preparing comments.