WASHINGTON — The federal government is looking hard at whether to make changes to the “Nutrition Facts” label found on packaged foods, Barbara O. Schneeman, Ph.D., said at a meeting on obesity sponsored by Business Access.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration published two different “advance notices of proposed rulemaking” in the Federal Register outlining the issues it was considering, explained Dr. Schneeman, who is director of the agency's Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements. “Estimates indicate that more than 70% of consumers will use the panel in their first-time food purchase, and 50% said they have changed a food purchase because of what they saw on the Nutrition Facts panel,” she said. “So it's a very valuable tool.”
One question the FDA is considering is how to make calorie information more prominent on the food label. “Some of the questions we were asking were, 'What are ways to give [calorie information] more prominence? Bold typeface? Larger font size? Should we consider including a daily value of calories?'” Dr. Schneeman said. “Would that create an incentive to change the number of calories in a product?”
Serving size is another issue, she said. Under current law, food packages must provide nutrition information for the “reference amount customarily consumed” (RACC) of a product. The RACC, or serving size, is currently derived from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Consumption Survey, which was taken in the late 1970s and late 1980s. “Do we need to update the RACCs? What database would we use to do that update?” she asked.
In fact, there are several issues concerning serving size, Dr. Schneeman said. “There's a lot of concern about confusion when consumers buy that 20-ounce soda or 4-ounce bag of chips. Do they realize that the labeling is for a single serving and that the container actually has more than one serving?
Dr. Schneeman said she was pleased that some manufacturers have already started including the nutrition information for the entire package of their products, even if the package contains more than one serving.
The comment period for both Federal Register notices has closed, and “I think we received far more comments on serving size than we did on calories,” she noted, adding that the agency was currently analyzing those comments.