The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued mandatory revisions to food manufactures for their nutrition labels. This long overdo revision is the first in 23 years! The new label design will include information, which more accurately reflects normal dietary habits of most people. In other words, the information you’ll see on a food label will actually apply in a way that should make sense to you and the way you eat. Finally!
There will be three distinct changes made:
1. Serving size - will more accurately reflect an actual serving you might realistically eat. Currently, manufactures often divide single foods into multiple servings so calories look more palatable and less forbidden. For example: imagine a cookie label, which states there are 200 calories in a serving. Okay, so you eat the cookie and the 200 calories. Bam! Then looking closer at the food label you realize it only accounted for half the cookie. That’s ridiculous because nobody eats a half a cookie. 400 calories? Bam!! One cookie, 2 servings. Yikes! This common manufacturing practice has been legal, but sneaky and confusing to people. However, the new labeling rules will put a stop to that practice.
2. Nutrients and ingredients - listed on the new labels will be items that will be designated essentially as key (my word) nutrients. Key meaning, nutrients commonly under consumed like potassium and vitamin D, and those over consumed like sugar and salt. Other commonly balanced nutrients previously listed, but which are not typically problematic won't be listed at all. The plan is to make it simple for you to track your "key" nutrients - good and not so good - throughout your day.
3. Percent of daily values (DV) - based on consumption of 2,000 calories daily, will make it easier to track what percent of a particular nutrient you have consumed for that day. Example: if you eat a food or meal containing 35% of your daily allowed salt, you know you've got 65% intake to go for the day before you exceed the daily 100% recommendation. It’s a simple and helpful tool for those who have been instructed to track a particular nutrient. Naturally you will be your own mathematician throughout your day.
Understand that these changes only apply to manufactured foods. You won’t be picking up an apple to read the label. Yet another reason to stay away from manufactured foods. Manufactured foods are typically (but in fairness, not always) so processed they need labels to disclose how bad they are for you.
To learn more about the coming FDA label changes visit:
http://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/guidancedocumentsregulatoryinformation/labelingnutrition/ucm385663.htm