New FDA nutrition labels are ‘important step forward’

New Food and Drug Administration nutrition labeling rules took effect on January 1, 2020.

One notable change is a requirement that some containers of packaged foods—those that people might reasonably eat in one sitting, like a pint of ice cream—list not only the nutrition information for one serving size but also for the entire package.

Another change is that all nutrition labels must now include the amount of added sugars a product contains. Frank Hu, Fredrick J. Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, commented on this change in a January 1, 2020 ABC News article. “Because higher added sugar intake has been associated with a wide range of adverse health consequences, it is important to distinguish added sugars from natural sugars in a product,” he said.

Hu called the new label requirements “an important step forward.”

Read the ABC News article: New FDA labels include nutrition info for eating that whole bag of chips or pint of ice cream