The Fda's New Nutrition Facts Label
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The info you need to know about the FDA's new Nutrition Facts Label.
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• Health: Diet • Health: Food & Nutrition
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just announced a brand new Nutrition Facts Label for food products sold in the USA. We've all seen the classic white label with black text on products we buy. It lists the various nutrition (or lack thereof) facts about the food item you're buying from the store.

The idea is that you should know what you're putting into your body so you can make better choices about what you eat and this improve your overall health. It's a great and one a lot of us label-readers use consistently on items we eat. But it's also been very misleading because it never accurately reflected some of the more important items, namely sugar.

What Changes?


Some of us believe that sugar can be pretty evil, at least in the form of added sugar. What was just "Sugars" on the old label is now broken out into "Total Sugars" as well as how much "Added Sugars" the manufacturer put in. You can now see just how much sugar is added by the manufacturer and compare it with how much is naturally occurring in the food.

It's this added sugar that has many health experts concerned and what many blame of the obesity epidemic in America, and now other parts of the world. These new sugar numbers make it easy to see what's been added but it's still up to you to decided when to say no. Hopefully this new label makes that easier.

What Else?


Manufacturers must now also declare the actual amount, in grams, in addition to the percent Daily Value of vitamin D, calcium, iron and potassium.

Serving sizes also changed and, by law, must be based on amount of food and drink people actually eat versus what they were eating. This is great news since many times you would find that just a small amount of food was the "recommended serving size" when we are all eating three times that much.

To give you an example, ice cream was previously listed at a 1/2 cup serving size. Who eats 1/2 cup of ice cream? Nobody! It's now at 2/3 of a cup which is certainly better, though still way too low if you ask me. Go ahead, measure your ice cream out next time. Does it look more like two full cups? Yea, thought so.

Soda (aka, pop) used to have an 8 ounce serving size which has been changed to 12 ounces which makes more sense. Of course, skipping soda makes even more sense! It's a great way to reduce your calorie intake and since even 1 serving of soda likely has more sugar than you should likely have in a day, you'll be doing much better on the sugar intake as well. Be sure to also read 6 Simple Ways To Cut 250 Calories Per Day.

When Does It Change?

So when will you see the new label? In classic American political style, it's a long way off. Manufacturers don't have to comply with the new label until July 26, 2018. Those that sell less than $10 million a year in food sales get another year, until 2019. Think about how insane that is for a minute. This is literally one of those changes that nobody should need more than a month to implement yet they have over 2 years!

You can bet that most companies won't comply until those dates and will likely do their best to fight and reverse this new label as well. After all, these companies spend insane amounts on lobbying to keep their sugar levels (etc) off the labels so consumers are less educated and more likely to keep drinking their sugar water. Just one more reason government lobbying by companies should be illegal.