Until now, an orange could not be called healthy, according to the US Food and Drug Administration. The fruit contains 70 calories, three grams of fiber and more than 100 percent of the recommended daily value of vitamin C. However, whole fruit cannot qualify for a “healthy” label based on existing FDA guidelines for use of the term. Water can’t do that either, along with pistachios, bananas and many other fresh foods.
But what is called “healthy” is about to change. A Revised FDA ruleJust announced this month, whole foods like oranges, in addition to fish like salmon, would make it possible to be healthy. What can’t use the word anymore? Foods with higher amounts of added sugar or saturated fat than the standard allows.
This change, the first in 30 years, could prevent many companies calling their breakfast cereals “healthy” from using the word on the box. The agency is working on a logo symbolizing “healthy,” which manufacturers can only use if they meet the new standards, but that takes some time.
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The old rule of thumb for using the word healthy on food labels was that the food had to contribute at least 10 percent of the daily value of certain vitamins, calcium, iron, protein, or fiber and exceed specific limits of saturated fat in total. fat, sodium or cholesterol. Nutrients should not occur naturally in the product.
“Today’s rule is dangerously outdated, focusing on 1980s dietary preferences around fat and saturated fat and so on,” he says. Dariush Mozaffariacardiologist and director of the Nutrition Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. He says the rule should be changed to focus on the FDA’s 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines recommendations, which no longer allow for supplementation. as a nutrient substitute in most foods for a naturally occurring nutrient. Thus, an orange with 100 percent of the recommended daily value of natural vitamin C is now preferred over most orange juices, which drain the nutrient-rich pulp from the juice, in a healthy diet.
The revised rules to add healthy labels encourage eating whole foods—foods that haven’t gone through a process that can strip away nutrients like fiber—and also encourage eating foods that are low in sugar and low in saturated fat and are rich in protein, oils, grains, and vegetables. or fruit by volume.
The previous rule did not require a product to be low in added sugar to be labeled as healthy. But the new rules do. For example, a food that meets the protein standard (meat, seafood, beans, eggs, nuts or seeds) cannot contain more than two percent of the recommended amount of sugar. This automatically eliminates, for example, potentially healthy chicken sausage with maple syrup. Vegetable and fruit products must not contain added sugar, and dairy products and grains can contain up to five percent of the recommended daily value. The saturated fat content is also subject to strict limits: five or 10 percent of the daily value depending on the type of protein.
Why did the FDA choose to limit added sugar? The agency consulted Scientific report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, same report Dietary Guidelines for America are based A scientific panel reviewed 23 studies and found that added sugar can increase overall calorie intake without the nutritional benefits you’d get from vegetables or whole grains.
2013-2016 data National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) This led to the report showing that average sugar intake contributed at least 200 calories to the daily diet across all age and gender groups. At the same time, most people were not eating in a way that met their food and nutrient requirements.
Food companies oppose the sugar standards, however, and say they could encourage consumers to buy products with more fat. Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy and federal affairs at the Consumer Brands Association, which represents most of the packaged food companies, says that foods that are now able to describe themselves as “healthy” are banned from using the word because of their sugar content, “because consumers are getting saturated fat. more, they may migrate to full-flavored offerings with added sugars and more sodium.” In other words, why get one lasagna over another if even the full-fat one doesn’t have a healthy label?
Gallo adds that “the FDA’s proposed limit on added sugars may reflect a misunderstanding of products on the market and how restrictive the FDA’s proposed limit on added sugars actually is.”
In fact, few cereals and yogurts you see on grocery shelves meet the added sugar limits. After reviewing a draft of the new rule, the Consumer Brands Association responded that one of its member companies had applied the FDA’s proposed criteria to 195 of its yogurt products and 104 of its cereal products. Only three cereals and 24 yogurts had sugar levels classified as healthy.
Nutrition experts are more optimistic about the new standards because the “healthy” label gives people an easy way to find some healthy foods. “I can tell my patients that foods with a healthy label are a safe bet. It takes time, 15 to 20 minutes, to learn to read a nutrition label,” and not everyone will take that time, says Courtney Pelitera, a registered dietitian who specializes in sports nutrition and wellness nutrition. . “Any shortcuts are helpful.”
Unfortunately, the label leaves no room for foods that do not meet the standards but come close. For example, Trader Joe’s Chicken Burrito Bowl has 22 grams of protein, nine grams of fiber and three types of whole grains. Frozen food options seem to have a strong nutritional value and a balance between food groups. Partly because it uses full-fat cheddar cheese, however, it has 4.5 grams of saturated fat, or 23 percent of the total recommended daily value. That’s above the 20 percent (four grams) daily recommended value needed to be healthy. Anyone who has a meal within this limit can easily offset the extra 0.5 grams of saturated fat by eating low-fat cheese or yogurt at another meal. And even if the three meals that day were 23 percent of the recommended daily value, that would still be below the daily total; they can get up to 31 percent of the daily value of saturated fat from snacks and still meet the guideline.
Consumer brands are finding other ways to show consumers which options are healthier than others, Gallo said. It’s not uncommon to see a package advertise the number of grams of whole grains a product contains or that it has no added sugar, even if it doesn’t follow the healthy label. Front-of-package labels often list fiber, protein, saturated fat, and more. “I can tell my patients to look for certain amounts of fat, fiber, and protein on labels,” says Pelitera.
While Mozaffarian supports the new healthy label requirements, he recommends the FDA take a different approach to switching products to healthier recipes. “Imagine a front-of-package label that shows fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes, and nuts and seeds in one package,” he says. This would give companies an incentive to start scaling up these components.
Another option is a graded system, and the Food Is Medicine Institute is testing one. “We’ve done a randomized control trial for ourselves Food Compass label, this is our more graded system, going from 1 to 100, to rate how healthy a food is, Mozaffarian says. Although the results are not yet published, he says, “We found that the Food Compass works even better for most people to make healthier shopping decisions.”
There’s a big question about the new FDA rule: Will it pass muster with the Trump administration, which has professed antipathy to some of the regulations? Some food policy experts think it will be fine. “I don’t see the next administration struggling. It’s a voluntary label claim,” says David Joy, a partner at the international regulatory law firm Keller and Heckman, who worked for 15 years in the Office of Regulatory Policy at the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “The FDA is updating the criteria for ‘healthy’ claims on food labels to align with current dietary guidelines, which is not a huge regulatory burden for the food industry,” he says.
But Emily Lyons, a food regulatory attorney and partner at the law firm Husch Blackwell, believes the Trump administration could make changes because the food industry has concerns about parts of the rule. He also warned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, wants to make his own changes, such as banning certain food dyes. The FDA’s policy “could be subject to the Congressional Review Act, which means that once Republicans control the House and Senate, they can repeal it,” Lyons says.
Even with the rule as written now, the new labels could take at least two years to change to grocery store products. But if they do, people will be able to walk down the supermarket aisles and see that water, whole fruit, lean protein and whole grains are very healthy.
