Consider this scenario: Jane and John Smith are shopping in their local grocery store. Overweight and suffering from high blood pressure, the Smiths are trying to limit their calories, salt, and fat, on their doctor's advice. Unfortunately, after half an hour of comparing labels on different brands of prepared foods, the Smiths ended up settling for their regular brands. They were unable to determine from the labeling information which products had the greatest health merit.
This scene is repeated daily in supermarkets around the country. Like the Smiths, millions of Americans are bewildered by food labels' hard-to-decipher format and print, incomplete information, and the often-misleading descriptions and claims. What is meant by "low salt"? What do "light" and "all-natural" really mean? And what does "fresh" mean on a can of soup?
Many health experts acknowledge the link between good health and quality food. They say Americans can dramatically cut the risk of certain diseases by eating foods low in fat, cholesterol, and salt and by eating foods high in complex carbohydrates. Many Americans now try to heed such health advice when shopping for groceries.
What's In A Name?
Nearly a century ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in an attempt to halt the use of unsubstantiated health claims on products, imposed stiff regulations to monitor and regulate food labels. Until recently, FDA regulations stated that labels could contain nothing more than the name of the product, its manufacturer, its packager or distributor, and its net weight or contents.
After the regulations were changed in the early 1970s, says of FDA spokesman, manufacturers have since been required to label food sold across state lines with the following information: the product's name, net weight, and ingredients (in descending order of quantity); the name and address of the manufacturer or processor; and finally, the product's nutritional content (calories, protein, carbohydrates, etc.) if the manufacturer has added a nutrient or is making a claim about the product. FDA regulations also stipulate numerous subcategories of required information, such as the packing medium (heavy syrup, for instance), instructions to add specific ingredients (like adding eggs to a cake mix), and the word imitation if the food is not the same as its unprocessed counterpart.
This list of required information seems complete and informative. But is it? All processed foods may carry labels listing their ingredients; but, as already noted, nutritional labeling is not always required. Only about 60 percent of the food products carry nutrition labeling - that is, the number of calories per serving and the amounts of fat, sodium, cholesterol, fiber, protein, vitamins, and carbohydrates per serving.
In addition, the nutritional information that is given can confuse as much as clarify. Food manufacturers and processors may freely use unregulated buzzwords such as light (or lite), natural, organic, high-fiber, low fat, low sugar, low salt, sugar free, and salt free without actually defining those terms. Additionally, in 1987, the FDA proposed that manufactures could make health claims on their products, provided that the claims are truthful and that the labels state that the product
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