Labeling: Food And Drug Administration

http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm387533.htm

Summary: Food Labeling: Revision of the nutrition and Supplement Facts Label

Food and Drug Administration (FDA), responsible for protecting and encouraging public health by the regulation and administration of nutrition and supplement facts label and many more considering food safety and pharmaceutical drugs, has the authority to necessitate nutrition labels on foods according to The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) of 1990. The aim of NLEA was to set a comprehensible labeling, aiding the consumers to make better food choices and motivating the producers to enhance the nutrition profiles for the food they are producing.

The label will provide latest scientific and technical reflections about nutrition besides the supplement facts it will link to such as chronic diseases like obesity. The changes will made according to new nutrition and public health research, current dietary recommendations, citizen petitions, impact on other regulations and other relevant considerations. Major changes can be grouped into three

Suggested rule is primarily based on new dietary endorsements, food and nutrition surveys based on nutrition intake from the National Health and nutrition Examinations Survey (NHANES) and consensus reports including nutrient intake suggestions from the institute of medicine. Specifically changes according to the new proposal would be the requirement of; assertion of ‘added sugars’, removal of ‘calories from fat’ and declaration of Vitamin D and potassium on the label. Moreover, FDA proposes to alter the units used for vitamins A, E and D from international units to metric measure (milligrams or micrograms).

Updated on serving size requirements and labeling:

The law demands that the serving size should be based on what people consume not on what people should be consuming. Since the current serving sizes are essentially based on Nationwide Food Consumption Surveys administrated in 1977-78 and 1987-88, it does not exhibit what people are actually eating nowadays. Therefore FDA proposes an update on reference values to set serving sizes more realistically. Furthermore, FDA suggests and alternative labeling for certain packages requiring labels to change to ‘single serving’ instead of ‘more than one serving’ because people tend to eat or drink