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Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Resonate your identity with Naseeb journals. Express your opinions, share your thoughts, post your writings and connect with like minded people through the power of expression.
Making Sense of Food Labels
By Lamya Tawfik
Freelance Journalist
It is not uncommon these days to find customers at a supermarket closely examining food packages. In the past, they would simply read the ingredients list and the expiry date. Today, with the double-edged sophistication of our lives, we are faced with a detailed nutritional label urging us to take note of what it says.
A required component of packaged food labels in many countries today, the nutritional label became mandatory in the US in 1990 with the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (FDA).
In Maryland, US, a convention was held in 2003 under the title "Exploring the Links Between Weight Management and Food Labels and Packaging." During the meeting, nutritional experts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services discussed the virtues of the nutritional label and how it could enhance the consumer's decision-making process.
For more information on understanding nutritional labels, take a look at this interactive file.
When the nutritional label first came out, "there was full recognition that to be useful, ? had to be used on all packaged foods," said Christine Taylor, Director of the Office of Nutritional Product and Labeling and Dietary Supplements in the Food Center for Safety and Applied Nutrition at FDA.
Research was conducted to come up with a label that was efficient and unambiguous. In effect, three conditions needed to be kept in consideration for the label, according to Lester Crawford, Deputy Commissioner of the FDA. "We have to have some degree of scientific evidence for health claims, it has to be pre-approved by FDA, and the labeling cannot be misleading," he said (FDA).
The appearance of the label, Crawford explained, is vital. "It must be targeted. It must be readable. It has to accommodate people that have to wear bifocals. It has to be something that gets the job done."
That consumer interface, according to Taylor, included being able to quickly spot it and that it becomes the same kind of label used in the same place, "so that consumers could use it as easily and as readily as possible."
However, Taylor pointed out, there are many other things on a food product that are also part of the label, such as product identification, ingredients statements, and manufacturer contact information. Certain labels also carry claims such as "calorie-free", "low-calorie" (defined as less than 40 K per serving), as well as comparison claims such as "reduced calorie" and declarations for fats, carbohydrates and sugar (FDA).
The part of the label discussed here is in fact the tabular part of the label under the heading "nutritional values" and under which there are many numbers and percentages left for the consumer to decipher.
Freelance Journalist
It is not uncommon these days to find customers at a supermarket closely examining food packages. In the past, they would simply read the ingredients list and the expiry date. Today, with the double-edged sophistication of our lives, we are faced with a detailed nutritional label urging us to take note of what it says.
A required component of packaged food labels in many countries today, the nutritional label became mandatory in the US in 1990 with the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (FDA).
In Maryland, US, a convention was held in 2003 under the title "Exploring the Links Between Weight Management and Food Labels and Packaging." During the meeting, nutritional experts from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services discussed the virtues of the nutritional label and how it could enhance the consumer's decision-making process.
For more information on understanding nutritional labels, take a look at this interactive file.
When the nutritional label first came out, "there was full recognition that to be useful, ? had to be used on all packaged foods," said Christine Taylor, Director of the Office of Nutritional Product and Labeling and Dietary Supplements in the Food Center for Safety and Applied Nutrition at FDA.
Research was conducted to come up with a label that was efficient and unambiguous. In effect, three conditions needed to be kept in consideration for the label, according to Lester Crawford, Deputy Commissioner of the FDA. "We have to have some degree of scientific evidence for health claims, it has to be pre-approved by FDA, and the labeling cannot be misleading," he said (FDA).
The appearance of the label, Crawford explained, is vital. "It must be targeted. It must be readable. It has to accommodate people that have to wear bifocals. It has to be something that gets the job done."
That consumer interface, according to Taylor, included being able to quickly spot it and that it becomes the same kind of label used in the same place, "so that consumers could use it as easily and as readily as possible."
However, Taylor pointed out, there are many other things on a food product that are also part of the label, such as product identification, ingredients statements, and manufacturer contact information. Certain labels also carry claims such as "calorie-free", "low-calorie" (defined as less than 40 K per serving), as well as comparison claims such as "reduced calorie" and declarations for fats, carbohydrates and sugar (FDA).
The part of the label discussed here is in fact the tabular part of the label under the heading "nutritional values" and under which there are many numbers and percentages left for the consumer to decipher.