New Nutrition Facts Label: 101

Compliance Dates

The effective date of the final rule was July 26, 2016. The compliance date for manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual food sales is July 26, 2018. Manufacturers with less than $10 million in annual food sales have until July 26, 2019 to comply. Even though the ruling passed, you won’t see new food labels for a few years, mid 2018 for most products and some not till 2019.

The goal
Claudine Kavanaugh, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.D., a health scientist at the FDA, stresses that the primary goal is not to tell consumers what they should be eating, but to expand and highlight the information they most need. “It’s all about providing information that people can use to make their own choices,” she says.

Key Changes
A huge debate emerged when the FDA first announced its plan to revise the label. Everyone, including consumers, scientists, and food lobbyists commented on the content and new design. Here are the highlights of the changes:

Refreshed Design
Calories: shown in a larger, bolder type. Serving size and number of servings per package: larger and easier to read on the label. Serving sizes will reflect common food portions. For example, the serving for ice cream will increase from half cup to two-thirds cup and for soda from eight ounces to twelve ounces. This change will help consumers make more informed decisions on the food portions they’re consuming.

Shift in Focus on Key Nutrients
Calories from Fat will be removed, and the emphasis will be on identifying the type of fat the food product provides, such as trans fat, saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, or monounsaturated fat.
Vitamins A and C will no longer be mandatory. It will be up to food manufacturers to include these vitamins.
Vitamin D and potassium will be mandatory for inclusion on the new Nutrition Facts label by all manufacturers.

Highlight on Added Sugar
The new Daily Value for added sugars on the revised label is 50 grams, or about 12 teaspoons—an amount representing 10 percent of the daily 2,000 calories recommended for many adults. The current Nutrition Fact label does not differentiate how much sugar is added or naturally occurring. A big change on the label is identifying how many grams of total sugar are added sugar. Natural sugar is found in milk and yogurt (lactose) and fruit products (fructose). Added sugar includes brown sugar, honey, evaporated cane syrup, malt syrup, molasses, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, and others.