Over the course of the last 150 years our food labels have
undergone drastic changes. If we go all the way back to the 13th century we
will find the first steps toward food labeling. When the king of England made a
proclamation of The Assize of Bread, which
basically stated that bakers could no longer add ground peas and beans into their
bread mix. Moving forward to modern times with President Lincolns Department of
Agriculture and the Bureau of Chemistry (the predecessor of the FDA). We see
the first large scale attempt of government regulatory organizations. Jumping
ahead again to 1971 we see the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) adding
saccharin to its list of GRAS or (generally recognized as safe). In 1977 we see the first and sadly not the
last demonstration of the power that big industry hold over political policies.
The Saccharin Study and Labeling Act is passed by Congress, this act stops the
FDA from banning saccharin. This act does however require that any food that contains
saccharin to be labeled stating that saccharin had been found to cause cancer
in laboratory animals. In 1990 the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act is
passed. This is where the labels we see today first come into fruition. The
NLEA requires foods to have nutrition labels, and that any health claim to be consistent
with the terms set by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In 2010
nutrition labels only need to consider 4 main nutrients as directed by the
Institute of Medicine. Calories, Saturated Fat, Trans-Fat, and Sodium are the 4
nutrients that are to be considered. Also in 2010 the USDA requires meat to
show nutrition data starting in early 2012. As of 2014 the FDA has proposed
changes to nutrition labels of food. Some of these changes are to focus more on
calories, update the serving sizes and to change how sugar is displayed. Specifically
to have the serving sizes more in line with actual consumption values, and to
have added sugar shown apart from natural occurring sugar.
The FDA has
many guidelines for food labels, such as just how much space of the package is
devoted to the nutrition labels. The location and placement label statements,
and getting as nitty gritty as to what fonts can be used, the font size of
greater the 1/16th of an inch based on the lowercase letter "o".
Looking at the nutrition label itself we can see 6 main areas; the Serving
Size, Calories, area 3 and 4 are lumped together into the Nutrient Section, the
Footnote Section, and finely the Percent Daily Value area. The serving size
area is the guideline for the calorie and nutrition sections. Depending on how many
servings the consumer is going to consume determines what the other areas must
be multiplied by in order to obtain an accurate measure. For instance, if the
consumer is going to have 2 servings then the total calories of the food must
be multiplied by 2. The Calorie section contains both total calories and the
amount of Calories from Fat. This area requires simple division to determine
the percentage of from fat that the calories are coming from. The Nutrient
section is broken into two parts. The first part is the nutrients that should
be limited, such as Total Fat which has subdivisions of Saturated Fat and Trans
Fat. Also Cholesterol and Sodium are included in this section. The other part
is the nutrients that we should get enough of. This is where the Vitamins and
Fiber percentages are located. The Footnote section does not always need to be
included, if for example the label were to be too small. The Footnote area
contains the Daily Recommended Values for a 2000 calorie and 2500 calorie diet.
The last section is the Percent daily Values that are contained in the package.
These values are based on the Recommended Values from the Footnote section.
Food labels give a lot of information that is necessary
for making healthy choices of what we consume. They have changed drastically
over the last few years, and will continue to change as the battle between
industrial food and public health continues to wage on. It will be interesting
to see how nutrient labels will change over the next 10 years.
