Changes coming for Nutrition Facts labels on food products: emphasis on calories, added sugar and serving size

Associated Press

By Danielle Ray
Kentucky Health News

Nutrition labels on food products will undergo a facelift over the next two years.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration finalized plans Friday to change labeling to emphasize calorie count and added sugars in an effort to simply nutrition labels and clarify serving sizes.

First lady Michelle Obama, a longtime crusader against childhood obesity, said parents will benefit from the upcoming changes.

"You will no longer need a microscope, a calculator, or a degree in nutrition to figure out whether the food you're buying is actually good for our kids," she told The Associated Press.

The overhaul puts less emphasis on fats and more on caloric value and added sugars. Calories on upcoming labels will be listed in larger font than other nutrient facts. Added sugar will get its own line, separate from naturally occurring sugar.  Currently, both added and naturally occurring sugars were lumped under one category, "Sugars."

New labels will also include a new "percent daily value" for added sugar, which will tell consumers how much of their recommended daily intake they will get from a given item. The FDA recommends consuming less than 10 percent of total daily calories (200 calories in a typical diet) from added sugar.

"The new labels should also spur food manufacturers to add less sugar to their products," Michael Jacobson, president of the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, told AP. He said that under current labeling, it's nearly impossible for consumers to know how much sugar fits into a reasonable diet.

The footnote will better explain what "percent daily value" means. It will read: “The % Daily Value tells you how much a nutrient in a serving of food contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.”

Serving sizes will also be clearer. The biggest difference will be that serving sizes will be based on what consumers typically eat instead of what they should eat. About one-fifth of foods will undergo revised calculations. For example, a serving size of ice cream will be 2/3 of a cup; previously it was a 1/2 cup.

If you've ever been duped into consuming more calories than you intended, or tried to calculate exactly what fraction of a slice of pizza constitutes a serving size, you're in luck. Package size affects what people eat, the FDA noted. So, products that were previously between one and two servings, such as a 20-ounce soda, will be labeled as a single serving, since consumers generally eat or drink the entire contents in one sitting.

Larger containers, like pints of ice cream, will have dual column labels: one column with information for a single serving and the other with information for the entire container.

Labels will also include two additional nutrients: potassium and Vitamin D.

Industry reaction was predictable. A representative for the Sugar Association told AP that emphasis on added sugar could confuse consumers, but other industry leaders welcomed the changes.

"This update is timely as diets, eating patterns and consumer preferences have changed dramatically since the Nutrition Facts panel was first introduced," Leon Bruner, of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, told AP.

Most food manufacturers have until July 2018 to comply. Smaller manufacturers will have an additional year.

The FDA proposed the changes two years ago. They are the first major update to nutrition labels since labeling was introduced in 1994. So far, more than 800,000 foods have nutrition labels.

For more information on the changes, click here.

Peanut butter can be a healthy choice, but you have to read the labels; gimmicks to improve taste not the best for nutrition

Peanut butter has long been considered a healthy food choice, and for the most part it still is, but with the advent of low-fat brands, flavored peanut butters and companies adding preservatives to lengthen shelf life, not all peanut butters are equally nutritious, Jose Aguayo and Ryan Canavan report for the Environmental Working Group.

Originally, peanut butter was made from one ingredient: ground roasted peanuts. But now, commercial brands have added sugars, salt, hydrogenated oils and other preservatives, and some are less acceptable than others.

For example, "reduced-fat peanut butters are some of the worst offenders," the authors write. To reduce the fat calories, manufacturers will often take out the healthy monosaturated fats but then add sugar and salt to improve the taste.

Most commercial brands also add hydrogenated oils, as well as preservatives like potassium sorbate, to extend peanut butter's shelf life. The authors note that over 80 percent of peanut-butter brands have hydrogenated oils, which introduce "artery-clogging saturated and trans fats to peanut butter's otherwise-healthy fat profile."

"For a healthy heart, the American Heart Association recommends avoiding foods with hydrogenated oils, including peanut butter," the authors write. So, read the labels when choosing a peanut butter to determine which ones have the least salt, sugar, hydrogenated oils and preservatives, remembering that the healthiest peanut butters are made from just ground roasted peanuts and a pinch of salt.

It should also be noted that while peanut butter can be a healthy choice, it is high in calories and should be eaten in moderation. A standard serving of peanut butter is 2 tablespoons, which is about the size of a golf ball. This amount has about 190 calories.

Americans are eating fewer calories, but need to cut back more if they want to combat the obesity epidemic

Americans are eating fewer calories for the first time since the government began keeping track, more than 40 years ago. While that's a step in the right direction, one researcher says that it is not enough to reverse the obesity epidemic, Margot Sanger-Katz reports for The New York Times.

The greatest decrease in calorie intake was found among children of all major demographic groups (with some variations), by at least 9 percent, Sanger-Katz reports.

image from fitfamilytogether.com

Much of this calorie decrease has come from people drinking less full-calorie soda, of which consumption has decreased in the U.S. by 25 percent since the 1990s, Sanger-Katz reports. Credit is also given to an influx of scientific research that emerged in the 1990s about the costs of obesity, and to more recent public health campaigns.

“I think people are hearing the message, and diet is slowly improving,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, told the Times.

Americans' eating habits began to rapidly change in the mid-1970s, with calorie consumption increasing steadily to its highest peak in 2003, Sanger-Katz writes.

“This was like a freight train going downhill without brakes,” Kelly Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told the Times. “Anything slowing it down is good.”

image from The New York Times

Three large sources of data about diet have convinced many health officials that the changes in calorie consumption are meaningful, reports the Times. The first two sources, detailed daily food diaries tracked by government researchers and data from food bar codes and estimates of food production, show a reduction in calories consumed by the average American since the early 2000s. The third source shows a leveling off of the national obesity rate.

While the trend toward eating fewer calories had already begun to surface, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in 1999, which showed the worsening obesity rates in the 1980s and 1990s across the nation, is thought to be the first breakthrough in understanding the magnitude of America's obesity problem. Soon after this study was released, the surgeon general issued a report that summarized the effects of obesity as a risk factor for several chronic diseases.

Now the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires chain restaurants to publish the calorie content of their meals, and in 2012 the federal government introduced new healthier standards for school meals for the first since 1995. Several cities have also increased their efforts to combat the obesity epidemic by subsidizing produce for the poor, limiting unhealthy foods in day care centers, and placing taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, reports the Times.

The most common theme of anti-obesity public health campaigns has been a focus on decreasing the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages, reports the Times. And it seems to have worked.

"Americans, on average,purchased about 40 gallons of full-calorie soda a year in 1998, according to sales data from the industry trade publication Beverage Digest analyzed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. That fell to 30 gallons in 2014, about the level that Americans bought in 1980, before the obesity rates took off," Sanger-Katz reports.

But public officials in the article also note that while overall Americans are eating less of everything, they aren't eating a healthier diet; the consumption of fruits and vegetables remains low, and the consumption of desserts remains high.

Chart from "The State of Obesity" report, 2014

Notably, more than a third of American adults are still considered obese, which also holds true in Kentucky, which ranks fifth in obesity among the states and has moved up in rank over the years, according to the 2014 "State of Obesity" report.

“The food part of our diet is horrendous,” Barry Popkin, a University of North Carolina professor who has studied food data extensively, told the Times.

There are demographic differences, and nagging problems. White families have reduced their calories more than black and Hispanic families; families with children have cut back the most; and Americans who are considered the heaviest have cut back the least, with their weight and waist circumference continuing to increase.

A paper by Kevin Hall, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, says that the recent reductions in calories are not enough to stem the current obesity epidemic, estimating that for Americans to return to the body weights of 1978 by 2020, an average adult would need to reduce calorie consumption by 220 calories a day.

Study finds kids eat too much pizza, too often, and it's bad for their health

While pizza consumption is lower than it used to be, kids are still eating too much of it, and it's affecting their health, Roberto A. Ferdman reports for The Washington Post.

The health issues are a result of the extra calories, fat and sodium consumed when children eat too much pizza, too often, according to a study published by the journal Pediatrics from the University of Illinois - Chicago, Ferdman writes.

"When you eat extra calories and don't compensate for it at another point of the day or week, it can lead to weight gain and even obesity," William Dietz, one of the study's authors and the director of the Sumner Redstone Global Center for Prevention and Wellness at the George Washington University, told Ferdman.

Obesity is a real problem for many of Kentucky's children. The state is ranked first for high school obesity, eighth for obesity in children aged 10 to 17, and sixth for obesity among 2- to 4- year-olds from low income families, according to the States of Obesity report.

The researchers tracked the diets of more than 11,000 children and teenagers using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and found that "On any given day, roughly 20 percent of all children aged 2 to 11 and adolescents aged 12 to 19 eat pizza," Ferdman reports. The younger children eat roughly 400 calories and teens upward of 600 calories on the days they eat pizza, rarely with a healthy side like salad or vegetables.

This boils down to pizza days being associated with "considerably higher" intakes of saturated and sodium, and an extra 84 calories for children and an extra 230 calories for teens.

"There are a bunch of takeaways from the study. But the biggest thing is that parents are serving their kids too much pizza," Dietz told Ferdman.

It's cheap. It's convenient. It's universally loved. And an estimated 3 billion pizzas are eaten every year in the United States. "What's to be done?" Ferdman asks.

"We're not suggesting that kids avoid pizza altogether,"Dietz told Ferdman. "But when parents serve it, it's important that they understand it's extremely caloric. They should serve smaller pizzas, or at least smaller slices. They might also want to serve it with vegetables instead of sausage on top."

Japan approves a high-fiber version of Pepsi as a fat blocker

Let's start here: Way too much of Kentucky is way too fat. And, let's add this, we drink lotsa sugary beverages. Why, our intake of Mountain Dew alone is legendary. So, here comes some news out of Japan which may have particular interest to Kentuckians: This week, Pepsi will start marketing a new product called Pepsi Special that is special indeed, since it has the blessing of that country's National Institute of Health and Nutrition as a "food for specified health use." That use, you ask? Fat blocking. Let me at it, you say? Hold up, we caution. Pepsi Special is, in a nutshell, Benefiber Pepsi.

According to reporters at the The Atlantic magazine, wheat dextrin is the same additive in Pepsi Special as the one that's sold as Benefiber in the U.S. It's a soluble fiber that "absorbs water as it moves through our intestines and promotes movement of food through the bowel, and contraction of the bowel wall itself." In a 2006 Japanese study, rats that ate wheat dextrin absorbed less fat from their food because, notes the magazine, "It essentially moved right through them."

So, is any of this actually good for you? Dextrin "may increase micronutrient absorption, stabilize blood glucose, lower serum lipids, may prevent several gastrointestinal disorders, and have an accepted role in prevention of cardiovascular disease," experts say. But you still have to restrict your soda intake for any of this to matter. (Read more)