Mars Food will help consumers differentiate and choose between “everyday” and “occasional” options. To maintain the authentic nature of the recipe, some Mars Food products are higher in salt, added sugar or fat. As these products are not intended to be eaten daily, Mars Food will provide guidance to consumers on-pack and on its website regarding how often these meal offerings should be consumed within a balanced diet. The Mars Food website will be updated within the next few months with a list of “occasional” products – those to be enjoyed once per week – and a list of “everyday” products – including those to be reformulated over the next five years to reduce sodium, sugar, or fat.
How to interpret these actions? I’m guessing they mean that the movement for good, clean, fair food has gained enough traction to put long-established food brands on notice: make your products healthier for people and the environment, or else.
Study: obese kids lose weight and improve metabolic markers when sugars are removed from their diets. The pediatrician Robert Lustig and his colleagues removed all sources of sugar from the diets of 43 extremely obese Latino and African-American children and teens, replacing the lost calories with starchy foods. After nine days, the kids lost a little weight and greatly improved their metabolic markers. We can argue about whether the effects are due to reduced calories, sugars, or fructose, and whether the results will hold up over a longer time period (as is explained in a careful critique). But what’s impressive is that it took only nine days to achieve highly statistically significant and beneficial improvements to occur. This finding deserves further research.
And now the politics
Action for Health Food supports Added Sugars on food labels. I learned this from Politico Pro Morning Agriculture. The group, backed by Houston philanthropists Laura and John Arnold, support Added Sugars on food labels. Action for Healthy Food says that it works with communities to inform consumers about the health effects of added sugars and where they are in food and drinks, and to support policies to help people reduce sugar intake and the amount of sugar in foods.
The International Food Information Council (IFIC) opposes Added Sugars labels. Such labels, it says, “run counter to rigorous research by the IFIC Foundation and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) demonstrating that consumers instead could be misled, not enlightened, by the addition of an ‘Added Sugars’ line.”
Also from Politico Pro Agriculture: Sam Kass favors Added Sugars labels. Helena Bottemiller Evich did the interview:
Are you following the Nutrition Facts panel debate going on right now? There’s a divide in the food industry on the issue of labeling added sugars. You have Nestle and Mars supporting added sugars labeling and a Daily Value, but there’s also fierce opposition on the other side. I think it’s clear that this issue is a high priority for the administration. Do you think that will come to fruition? Has that ship sailed?
In my book, that ship has sailed. It’s absolutely the right thing to do for consumers. I think the FDA knows that and that’s why they proposed it. I think the evidence firmly backs it and I just don’t see a good argument not to do it. I think there’s fierce opposition because some of these companies are putting way too much added sugars in their products, and they don’t want that to be pointed out. But just like trans fats, this is one of these things where the health issues are pretty clear. I just don’t see any legitimacy in their pushback.
They argue that people will be confused by the label.
Yeah, that’s a nice claim.
They have studies showing that people are confused.
I’m sure they do. Money can buy whatever outcome you want. But I just think this one is clear as day, especially when you look at the diabetes epidemic and the relation to added sugars and health outcomes in this country.
Another from Politico Pro Agriculture: Nestlé and Mars have split with the Grocery Manufacturers Association over Added Sugars labeling. “While the nation’s leading food group, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, welcomes the FDA’s labeling proposal about as much as it would a toothache, the pair of global powerhouses…are voicing support for even the thorniest details of the Obama administration’s plans, both in the regulatory docket and in the media.” FDA’s own research in support of Added Sugars leaves room for debate.
The courts have rejected class action claims about Whole Foods’ use of the term “evaporated cane juice.The plaintiff argued that this is a euphemism for sugar and is only used to hide sugar on foods labels. The judge called the plaintiff “clueless, as elsewhere in his testimony he implies he knew ECJ was an unrefined form of added sugar: Added unrefined sugar is added sugar, no matter how Plaintiff tries to spin it.”
It’s Halloween and the Candy Industry is happy. The industry considers October 31 its “Super Bowl,” with sales expected to hit a record $2.6 billion, according to Politico. The candy industry complains that sugar is being demonized by “public activists.” It is fighting to eliminate tariffs and quotas that protect sugar farmers and keep the price of U.S. sugar higher than on world markets. He said candy “plays a special, unique role in people’s lives in terms of a happy and balanced lifestyle, and it really is a moment of pleasure.”
Last week, STAT News asked if I would write something about the FDA’s definition of “Healthy” for them. I agreed because I was planning a blog post on it anyway (posted here).
I wrote a draft and had a great time working with a STAT editor, Patrick Skerritt, to fill in some missing pieces. Here’s how it came out (with a couple of after-the-fact embellishments).
The FDA has announced the set of rules it proposes to enforce for manufacturers to claim that a food product is “healthy.” The proposed rules are a lot better than the labeling anarchy that currently exists. But here’s my bottom line: health claims are not about health. They are about selling food products.
The FDA says that a “healthy” product must meet two requirements: It must contain a meaningful amount of food, and it must not contain more than certain upper limits for saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.
To illustrate the “healthy” claim, the FDA is also researching a symbol that food makers can use, and might be testing examples like these.
This action is the latest in the FDA’s attempts to simplify food label information so it’s easier for consumers to identify healthier food choices. It is also an attempt to head off what food companies most definitely do not want: warning labels like those used in Chile, Brazil, and several other countries. These have been shown to discourage purchases of ultra-processed “junk” foods, just as they were supposed to, a message understood even by children or adults who cannot read. No wonder food manufacturers will do anything to prevent their use.
If we must have health claims on food packages, the FDA’s proposals are pretty good. They require any product labeled “healthy” to contain some real food (as opposed to a collection of chemical ingredients or, as author Michael Pollan calls them, “food-like objects”), and for the first time they include limits on sugars.
Here’s an example given by the FDA: To qualify for the “healthy” claim, a breakfast cereal serving would need to contain at least three-quarters of an ounce of whole grains and could contain no more than one gram of saturated fat, 230 milligrams of sodium and 2.5 grams of added sugars.
These proposed rules would exclude almost all cereals marketed to children.
But do Americans really need health claims on food products? You might think that any relatively unprocessed food from a plant or animal ought to qualify as healthy without needing FDA approval, and you would be right. But health claims aren’t about health. They are meant to get people to buy food products, not real foods like fruit, vegetables, grains, nuts, meat, poultry, dairy, eggs, or fish.
Food companies love the term “healthy” because it gets people to buy food products.
The history of “healthy”
How did we get to where the FDA needs to require a product to contain real food to be considered “healthy”? Blame KIND bars.
In 2015, KIND (then a small private company, but now owned by Mars) advertised its bars as healthy because they contained whole foods like grains and nuts. But nuts have more fat than the FDA allowed at the time for products to be labeled as “healthy.” The FDA warned KIND that its bars violated the rules for health claims.
KIND fought back. It filed a citizens’ petition arguing that even though nuts are higher in fat than the FDA allowed, they are healthy. The FDA could hardly argue otherwise — of course nuts are healthy — and it backed off. It permitted KIND to use the term and said it would revisit its long-standing definition of “healthy.” That was good news for KIND.
At the time, the FDA’s definition of “healthy” set upper limits for fat, saturated fat, sodium, and cholesterol; required at least minimal amounts of one or more vitamins or minerals; and said nothing about sugars. So the new FDA proposals break new ground in simplifying the nutritional criteria and in putting a limit on sugars.
Front-of-package symbols
These, too, have a long history with the FDA. In the early 1990s, when the agency was writing the rules for Nutrition Facts labels on food products, it tested public understanding of several prototype designs. As it happened, nobody could understand any of the samples very well, so the FDA picked the one that was the least poorly understood. Soon afterward, food companies and health organizations developed symbols that would allow buyers to recognize at a glance which products were supposed to be good for them.
By 2010, more than 20 such symbols were on food packages. The FDA commissioned the Institute of Medicine to do studies of front-of-package labeling. The Institute’s first report on the subject examined the strengths and weaknesses of all of the symbols cluttering up the labels of processed foods, and recommended that the FDA develop a single symbol that would cover just calories, saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium. Why not sugars too? The Institute said calories took care of them.
But the Institute’s second report did include sugars. It recommended a front-of-package labeling system that would give food products zero, one, two, or three stars (or check marks) depending on how little they had of the undesirable nutrients.
This, in my view, is so obfuscating that nobody pays any attention to it. But this scheme, coupled with industry pushback, was all it took to get the FDA to drop the entire idea of a symbol that would tell people what not to eat.
Here we are a decade later with the FDA’s current proposal. This plan is strong enough to exclude huge swaths of supermarket products from self-identifying as “healthy.” Products bearing the “healthy” symbol will have to contain real food and be low in saturated fat, salt, and sugar, as called for by federal dietary guidelines.
The new rules won’t stop “healthy” products from being loaded with additives and artificial sweeteners. And the FDA won’t require warning labels for unhealthy products, which work better than other symbols. But these proposals are a marked improvement over the current situation.
And the FDA might do more. It could look into the idea of warning labels. It already promises to make a decision about the other ambiguous marketing term, “natural.” A decision on that one can’t come soon enough.
I can’t wait to see what companies wanting to sell ultra-processed food products as “healthy” will have to say about this.
Marion Nestle is professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, author of the Food Politics blog, and author of the new memoir, “Slow Cooked: An Unexpected Life in Food Politics” (University of California Press, October 2022).
The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) are announcing their “Nutrition Keys” plan for front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition labels. Their member companies have agreed to display calories and percent of saturated fat, trans fat, and sodium, per serving, on the front of product packages.
So far, so good.
But they also will be displaying up to eight “positives,” nutrients that are supposed to be good for you. They say they will be using some kind of design similar to what some companies are using now, only with “positives” added.
Note: this illustration comes from Mars (the company, not the planet). It is not what GMA and FMI will necessarily use.
Let me repeat what I wrote last October when GMA and FMI first said they intended to do this:
Forget the consumer-friendly rhetoric.
There is only one explanation for this move: heading off the FDA’s Front-of-Package (FOP) labeling initiatives.
In October, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the first of its FDA-sponsored reports on FOP labels. Based on research on consumer understanding of food labels and other considerations, the IOM committee strongly recommended that FOP symbols only list calories, sodium, trans fat, and saturated fat.
This led William Neuman of the New York Times to summarize the IOM approach as: “Tell us how your products are bad for us.”
GMA and FMI would much rather label their products with all the things that are good about them, like added vitamins, omega-3s, and fiber. If they have to do negatives, they prefer “no trans fat” or “no cholesterol.”
What they especially do not want is for the FDA to impose “traffic-light” symbols. These U.K. symbols, you may recall from previous posts, discourage consumers from buying anything labeled in red, and were so strongly opposed by the food industry that they caused the undoing of the British Food Standards Agency.
GMA and FMI, no doubt, are hoping the same thing will happen to the FDA.
At the moment, the FDA is waiting for the IOM’s second report. This one, due in a few months, will advise the FDA about what to do about FOP labels—again based on research. Couldn’t GMA and FMI wait?
From what I’ve been hearing, GMA and FMI could not care less about the IOM or FDA. This is what they had to do to get member companies to agree. They say the new labels will go on about 70% of branded products by next year. They also say they will spend $50 million on public education.
How this will play out in practice remains to be seen. You can bet that plenty of highly processed foods will qualify for “positives,” just like they did with the industry-initiated Smart Choices logo, may it rest in peace.
As I said in October: This move is all the evidence the FDA needs for mandatory FOP labels. GMA and FMI have just demonstrated that the food industry will not willingly label its processed foods in ways that help the public make healthier food choices.
Let’s hope the GMA/FMI scheme flunks the laugh test and arouses the interest of city and state attorneys general—just as the Smart Choices program did.
The official announcement is coming this afternoon. Stay tuned.
Addition: Scott Obenshaw, Director of Communications for GMA files the following clarification:
1.) In addition to the information regarding calories, saturated fat, sodium and total sugars content, the Nutrition Keys icon on some products will display information about two “nutrients to encourage.” The two nutrients to encourage that may appear on some products as part of the Nutrition Keys icon must come from the following list: potassium, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium, iron and also protein. These “nutrients to encourage” can only be placed on a package if the product has more than 10% of the daily value per serving of the nutrient and meets the FDA requirements for a “good source” nutrient content claim.
2.) Transfat is not part of the label – only calories, saturated fat, sodium and total sugars content.
Let’s give GMA and FMI lots of credit for replacing the IOM’s recommendation for trans fat with sugars. Trans fats are heading out of the food supply and consumers want to know about sugars. So that’s an improvement. And two positives might not overwhelm the so-called negatives. But I’m eager to see what the design really looks like and will report as soon as it is released.
This page is somewhat disorganized in that I now put occasional print, audio, and video interviews, which used to be separated, together by year. The section at the very end is called Controversies; it is where I post letters from critics. Scroll down to find whatever you are looking for. Media interviews and reviews for specific books are on the page tabs for that book. For old podcasts and videos of presentations, look under Appearances and scroll down for Past Appearances; in recent years, I’ve been putting them in the chronological list here.
Interviews, media appearances, and lectures (the ones for which I have links)
Jan 17 Podcast interview with Kathlyn Carney, Connecting the Dots. Lisen on Spotify or Apple Podcast
Jan 16 LA Times guide to Japanese subscription snack boxes (Video Part I). Part II is Jan 23 (same clip?)
Jan 14 The Franklin Institute’s Ben Franklin Birthday celebration. My talk comes first. Others are from Eric Oberhalter and honoree Wendell Berry. Use passcode $H81iALu
Jan 15 Two short answers to questions at FAO’s Regional Office in Santiago, Chile. Video 1: on what governments can do about childhood obesity. Video 2: on food choices in an unhealthy food environment.
July 5 Goldberg R. Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1. Health and Nutrition: Interview with Marion Nestle:1-13. Video online
July Carter J. Interview with Marion Nestle. In: Food for Thought: Feeding the People, Protecting the Planet. Aspenia [Aspen Institute Italia] 2015;67:101-105.
July Carter J. Intervista a Marion Nestle. Come cambiano le politiche alimentary. In: Fame Zero: Rinascimento agricolo. Aspenia [Revista di Aspen Institute Italia] 2015;69:198-202.
January 10 Video interview on Star Talk, co-hosts Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman, with Anthony Bourdain, about the science of cooking (sort of).
May 21 Print interview with Revital Federbush for an Israeli women’s magazine, mostly about dairy foods I’m told (it’s in Hebrew, which I cannot read, alas).
November 19 Interview with Al Jazeera for a Fault Line program on “Fast food, fat profits: obesity in America (my 10 seconds starts at about minute 15).
September 16 Speech at Columbia University conference on Global Food Systems: Their Impact on Nutrition and Health for All on panel on Advanced Technologies, Food Safety and the Role of Local and Organic Food Production (video)
November 12 Panel discussion on the farm bill, Wagner School of Public Service, Puck Building (Lafayette at Houston), 2nd floor. Here is Wild Green Yonder’s take on it.
February 6, 2008 Biologique Foods radio, two podcast interviews with TJ Harrington in Bloomington, MN, one on food politics and the other on what’s in your food.
Interview with Laura Flinders (and Arun Gupta and Peter Hoffman), Grit TV. It’s on how to eat well without going broke, and starts with a Monty Python clip on Spam 11/26/08
September 5, 2007 Scientific American Podcast with Steve Mirsky. Because I am a Paulette Goddard professor at NYU, he sends along an article he wrote about Einstein’s experience with the gorgeous movie star.
NPR Science Friday, panel on the farm bill with Michael Pollan and Sandor Ellix Katz 8/10/07
Are you responsible for your own weight? Balko R. Pro: Absolutely. Government has no business interfering with what you eat. Brownell K, Nestle M. Con: Not if Blaming the Victim Is Just an Excuse to Let Industry off the Hook. Time June 7, 2004:113.
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