ResearchCommentaryHow the Nutrition Food Label Was Developed, Part 1: The Nutrition Facts Panel
Section snippets
Context for Nutrition Labeling
Nutrition labeling for foods as overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began in the 1970s. It was initiated, in part, due to the concern about nutrient deficiencies and was a voluntary program unless a nutrient was added to a food or a nutrition claim was made, in which case nutrition labeling was mandatory. By the 1980s, new scientific findings about diet and health were increasingly reported and consumer interest in diet as a way to improve health was high. Food manufacturers were
The Nutrition Facts Panel
The Nutrition Facts panel is shown in Figure 1. The NLEA, and hence the facts panel, applies to packaged foods regulated by the FDA. The NLEA does not apply to foods regulated by the US Department of Agriculture, which are meat and poultry products. However, the US Department of Agriculture voluntarily put in place nutrition labeling regulations consistent with those issued by the FDA (3). Also, the NLEA does not address advertising for foods; food advertising is regulated by the Federal Trade
Guiding Principle: Emphasis on Key Nutrients
Clearly, a key principle inherent in the facts panel is that the nutrients or food substances listed on the panel should be those that are of greatest public health significance and are needed by consumers to implement the major, established dietary recommendations. The key questions are: which nutrients should be included, in what order, and how are they defined?
Prior to the passage of the NLEA, the FDA had begun work to update the list of nutrients required to be included in nutrition
Guiding Principle: Appropriate and Useful Presentation of Information
The facts panel is also based on the principle that, within the confines of the space allowed, the information should be as easy to understand as possible and consistently presented to ensure the ease of its use. Section 2(b) of the NLEA stipulated that the nutrition information shall “… be conveyed to the public in a manner which enables the public to readily observe and comprehend such information and to understand its relative significance in the context of the total daily diet” (2).
Conclusions
The Nutrition Facts panel was developed as a tool to assist consumers in identifying foods that will comprise a healthful diet, primarily through the comparison of the nutrient content of foods. Its development rests on a set of guiding principles, with the critical expectation that the tool is based on the need to provide education (the “E” in “NLEA”) to consumers about its use. Experience as well as common sense tells us that the facts panel on foods does not exist or operate in a vacuum, and
C. L. Taylor and V. L. Wilkening are retired from the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, College Park, MD, where they were formerly director and deputy director, respectively, of the Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements.
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2018, Journal of Nutrition Education and BehaviorCitation Excerpt :The Nutrition Facts panel (here this term is used interchangeably with nutrition label) is a population-level nutrition communication device that provides consumers at the point of purchase with information needed to comply with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.1,2
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2016, AppetiteCitation Excerpt :Such information has long been available on consumer packaged goods (per the requirements set forth by the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990), but only recently have chain restaurants been required to provide nutritional information. The basic notion, similar to that for packaged goods (Balasubramanian & Cole, 2002), is that displaying calorie information provides consumers with the information needed to make healthier choices (Taylor & Wilkening, 2008). However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of providing calorie information has been mixed, with some finding no impact of calorie information on calories ordered and others finding a small to moderate impact (for summaries, see Kiszko, Martinez, Abrams, & Elbel, 2014; Liu, Wisdom, Liu, Roberto, & Ubel, 2014).
C. L. Taylor and V. L. Wilkening are retired from the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, College Park, MD, where they were formerly director and deputy director, respectively, of the Office of Nutritional Products, Labeling, and Dietary Supplements.