If you thought food labels were already confusing, get ready to rethink what not to eat and how much. Announced last Friday, the newly approved food labels, which won’t go into effect for two years, will give you something to chew on. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
While science has been telling us for years that sugar, in all its forms, kills more people than gun violence and war, most of us ignored the warning. Well, the new labels will make that somewhat harder to do.
A new line will tell the dirty truth: exactly how much additional sugar has been added to the food we eat. Additional means anything not found in regular food such as milk or fruit (lactose and fructose) and includes all the various names manufacturers use to hide sugar. Think corn sweeteners, glucose, corn syrup, etc. There are more than 50 euphemisms for sugar, according to the FDA.
The agency has said, “It is difficult to meet nutrient needs while staying within calorie limits if you consume more than 10 percent of your total daily calories from added sugars.” So the new labels will also list what percentage of the recommended daily allowance this represents.
And serving sizes will have to ditch the pie-in-the-sky one-half cup of ice cream or the one-ounce portion of dry cereal on old labels. Serving sizes will have to be much closer to what a normal person would actually eat. By “normal” one assumes American rather than European or Asian, where portions are small by comparison.
The term, “calories from fat” will be replaced by “total fat,” “saturated fat” or “trans fats.” Since manufacturers have been able to label any amount less than 0.5 as zero trans fat, the best way to find out if a product contains any of the offending fat is to look at the ingredients list for the words “partially hydrogenated oil,” often found on stick margarine packages.
The amount of calories, which will be larger to correlate with the larger portion size, will also be printed in larger, bolder type so it will be easier to read.
But while nutritionists and doctors are hailing the change, food producers aren’t taking this lying down. Food manufacturing groups are pushing back, saying the new labels, which haven’t been changed for 20 years, unfairly vilify sugar. And it doesn’t have to be a cookie or cake or pie. Sugar has been added to just about everything, including bread, salad dressing, ketchup, all foods not thought of as sweet. Why? Because sugar in all its many forms is addictive and they want us to buy more. And we wonder why it’s so hard to stop at half of a cup.
Well, they are just telling us what some of us already knew. Sugar, in any form, causes the production of the hormone insulin, which signals the body to store fat. (Spare tire, anyone?)
One big omission, however, is any mention of caffeine content. It would be so useful for those of us who have a serious sensitivity to caffeine to know how much may be included in things like coffee-flavored ice cream. Three sips of regular espresso can give me tachycardia when the barista mixes up my order for a decaf latte.
The companies that sell tea have included this information for years without being forced to do so by government regulation. But the makers of energy drinks have ignored calls for caffeine amounts even in the face of many emergency room visits (and wrongful death lawsuits). Of course, the word “energy” on the label should be a dead giveaway.
There have also been changes to certain vitamins that may have been added and to sodium, which has been linked to hypertension, canned soups being the worst offenders. I’ve been causing traffic jams in grocery store aisles for years trying to read the small print. I learned that if it’s hard to read because the print is black on a red label or red on a blue label, the manufacturer doesn’t really want you to know what it says.
So here’s to more and better information and perhaps weaker leverage of industry groups.
For more information on new changes to food labels, check fda.gov/food.