Are Nutrition Labels Boring on Purpose?

January 27, 2011

In the next couple of months, figuring out the nutritional value of your food will be a little easier: you won't even need to flip over the box.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) will be unleashing new front-of-packaging labels that will tell customers how much saturated fat, sugar, calories, and sodium will end up in their guts if they eat what they're looking at.  (To be fair, there's space to list two good-for-you nutrients as well.)

Who knew that manufacturers were such benevolent guardians of our health?

post_gma

But the subtle black-and-white design of the new icons, with every word written in capitals, may expose an ulterior motive: preempting colorful, eye-grabbing imagery initially proposed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA had wanted to rate foods with a red-light, yellow-light, green-light system, similar to the one used in the U.K.

Check out GOOD's article for more on why the GMA's graphics may not be worthy of full-on standing applause.

Image from Grocery Manufacturer's Association

Comments 2

rachelassuncao's picture

Submitted by rachelassuncao on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 12:17pm
This proposed FOP labeling system isn't going to be helpful at all. First, it doesn't say how big a serving is. Since the listed serving size is usually significantly less than what a person eats in a serving, the data is already questionable. It also doesn't say whether or not the DV amount is good or not - for example, is 14% of my daily potassium intake actually enough? Should I opt for foods richer in potassium? And 14% for who? A toddler? A body builder? A petite woman? A clear and easy to understand traffic-light system would be much better for the average consumer. The question is, who gets to decide the criteria for a system like that and how many corporate dollars will it take to make a simple to understand red-yellow-green system more complicated? My motto is to opt for foods that don't require clever marketing. You can eat all the whole foods, cooked from scratch, you want without having to worry about this all.

Submitted by SEP on Fri, 01/28/2011 - 10:49am
I think this is a step in the right direction, but I'm currently living in the UK and I have found the red, yellow, green coding system extremely helpful.