good eats

FDA’s New Nutrition Labels Reflect Actual Servings, Not What Americans Pretend They’re Eating

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Your days of glancing at a nutrition label and pretending you’ll only eat the recommended twelve chips are numbered. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration will announce the biggest changes to nutrition labels on food packages since they became mandatory in the early 1990s. The proposed redesign, which won’t be finalized for months, looks similar to the current labels, but calories are in a much bigger font, serving sizes will be more realistic, and most controversially, added sugars must be listed. “I really like them. I’m kind of stunned actually,” Marion Nestle, a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University told the New York Times, adding, “My prediction is that this will be wildly controversial.”

While many health experts are thrilled, the food industry isn’t happy. So far they aren’t complaining publicly, possibly because First Lady Michelle Obama pushed to release the new labels, which have been in the works for a decade, and she’ll announce the changes on Thursday during a Let’s Move! anniversary event at the White House. “I don’t think anyone is going to be foolish enough to attack the first lady — that’s just stupid,” a longtime food company consultant told Politico. However, “It’s sort of a laundry list of everything the industry didn’t want.”

New FDA Nutrition Labels Use Realistic Servings