Label Makeover

Finally! The food labels are getting a makeover!

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has decided it's time. The new label will be the first update on the labels required on food since the passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act almost twenty years ago. The changes are intended to make labels easier to understand by putting the information into a context consumers can more clearly comprehend.

Some of the proposed changes are (courtesy of Tara Parker-Pope's Well blog):

1. Put calorie and serving size information in larger type at the top of the label so it’s immediately clear how much you are eating.
2. Make the ingredient list easier to read by printing it in regular type instead of all capital letters. Use bullets to separate ingredients rather than allowing them to all run together.
3. List minor ingredients and allergens separately from the main ingredient list. Highlight allergy information in red.
4. List similar ingredients together and show the percentage by weight. For instance, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and grape juice concentrate are all forms of sugar and should be listed in parenthesis under the catchall heading “sugars.”
5. Use red labeling and the word “high” when a product has more than 20 percent of the daily recommendation for fats, sugars, sodium or cholesterol.
6. Make it clear which sugars are added to the product versus those that occur naturally.
7. Display prominently the percentage of whole grains contained in a product.
8. List caffeine content.

This image shows some of the proposed revisions. You can see and read more here.

I'm curious to see what the labels finally end up looking like!