Posted on 01/26/2013 8:47:05 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Can improved labeling on food products help consumers make healthier choices? A new study by the Food and Drug Administration shows that it can. The FDA is in the process of updating the 20-year-old nutrition facts label that appears on all food and beverage products in the U.S.
The organization’s researchers believe that improved labels may assist consumers in making healthier decisions about the food they buy.
The FDA commissioned the study as part of the action plan for its Obesity Working Group. The researchers' goal was to determine whether modifying the key elements of the nutrition facts label might help consumers better understand the nutrition label , and in turn make more healthful decisions while purchasing and eating food.
“Survey research conducted by the FDA has shown that consumers have come to rely on the food label to determine the nutritional content of the food they eat. In fact, the percentage of consumers who report that they often read a food label the first time they purchase a food rose from 44 percent in 2002 to 54 percent in 2008,” said Amy M. Lando, who co-led the study along with Serena C. Lo, Ph.D., also of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in College Park, Md.
To test the effectiveness of different labels, researchers created one new label that used two columns to display the nutritional details for a single serving of a product alongside the details for the entire package. The researchers also created labels that only displayed nutritional information for the entire package, rather than using the method of citing per-serving nutritional information.
“In particular, we were interested in studying products that have two servings per container but that are customarily consumed in a single eating occasion,” said Lando.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Nanny State PING!
Better food labeling could stem obesity LOL
This coming from the same folks that gave us the BS Food Pyramid.
For many of us it’s poison control information. Just tell me about wheat, barley, rye content ~ others need to know about dairy products in there ~ and then there’s the nut nuts ~ they want to know if they’ll end up on the floor choking to death. Soy has recently hit the list as a bad deal, as has peppermint and mint!
Yeah right, so someone that has the urge to eat a quart of ice cream is going to read the label and change their mind, or that guy that’s chuggin that beer and eating the sack of Doritos will stop, read the label, and switch to Perrier and a celery stick!
Then why bother with that tiring exercise stuff all the time?!
seeing the calories listed on something really affects me..it usually shocks me and I look for something else to eat.
Just in from my advance research facility. Fat people eat too much and exercise too little. Pants should come with labels that read, “if you can’t see your junk, you eat too much and you are fat and lazy.”
See my tag line.
Yep! I would start with Michelle Obama.
Several months ago, when picking my middle school child up from school......the ‘jocks’, who had football practice after school, were making their way down to Subway and DQ. When I asked my kid what was going on......he said that they weren’t getting enough food in school.....thanks to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative.
When I was in HS.....the footballers, who did weight training during school hours, would purchase TWO trays of food. They NEEDED the caloric intake. Son said that wasn’t allowed, now.
I understand your point, but tell me how the hell did we all survive 10’s,20’s,30’s,40’s,50’s, 60’s, etc. I don’t recall a single kid going into shock and dying when peanut butter was still allowed in school. We would go on day long field trips with our sack lunches in the hot unrefrigerated storage bins of the bus for hours before we ate them and not one kid got sick or died. So I guess what I’m asking is What The Hell Happened To US?
So would stop putting some much in your pie hole and moving around a lot more.
Heard on the news the other night that FDA decided it would be better to have the values for the entire package on things that contain more than one serving, rather than per serving, so that people wouldn’t be “forced to do any math”.
This means brand new labels for everything - AGAIN. Just asinine. Don’t know about anybody else but I don’t have time nor the desire to stand there and read labels. I do know it’s almost impossible to find an assortment of food that isn’t fat free, sodium free, gluten free. Wish they would just leave it alone and bring back the old U.S. grown, manufactured products.
Yeah, label every food with a Fattening Index, some sort of ratio between calories and bulk and/or fiber.
Maybe a private organization could get a rating like that to work (Weight Watchers might be interested) but this should be out, out, OUT of Uncle Sam’s purview. The government tends to muddle nutrition wherever it sticks its dirty little fingers.
So would ending EBT cards for anything except raw beans, rice and vegetables.
That's my problem with politicians. From the lowliest city council member to the presidency, they all "feel" they need to fix the unbroken in the name of their legacy or some righteous ideology.
The only recourse to stopping politicians is term limits at every level.
Just because you weren't there or didn't know anybody doesn't mean it didn't happen!
Children were dying all the time from CF. They don't now.
Lets start with limiting what can be bought with a EBT card and lowering the amount you give them every month eh?
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