Update food labels, experts urge U.S. government

Last Updated: 2003-12-12 9:34:16 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Maggie Fox

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Food and supplement labels need to be updated to reflect current nutritional guidelines and should warn, for instance, against eating too much artery-clogging trans-fat, federal advisers said on Thursday.

The current labels are based on 1968 guidelines, which have been updated many times in the past 35 years, they said.

Instead, labels in the United States and Canada should be based on the current Dietary Reference Intakes, the Institute of Medicine committee said.

"The familiar 'percent Daily Value' figures included in Nutrition Facts boxes, which are required on the labels of most food products in both countries, are not based on the most current scientific information," said the committee, one of the National Academies of Sciences, in a statement.

"We hope that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and Health Canada will use these principles to revise the scientific basis for nutrition labels and discretionary fortification," said Irwin Rosenberg, a nutrition scientist at Tufts University in Boston.

The committee, which issued the report at the request of FDA, USDA and Health Canada, said the information should still be based on the average recommended 2,000-calorie diet and expressed as a percentage of those calories.

"The (nutrition facts) boxes should display a single reference value for each nutrient, and this value should be relevant for healthy individuals ages 4 and older, excluding pregnant or lactating women," the statement read.

One consumer group criticized this approach.

"This committee is calculating daily values in a new way that in some cases will dramatically reduce the apparent need for certain vitamins and minerals," said Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

He said current labels are weighted toward groups who need more folic acid or iron - for instance young women. The new recommendations would reflect average values.

"They are basing it on the average needs of the average American, mixing in old ladies and young ladies, teen-aged boys and young men," Jacobson said in a telephone interview.

The committee addressed this, saying in its statement that it would be "impractical to provide Daily Values for each subgroup on nutrition labels."

But Jacobson praised a recommendation that daily values for saturated fatty acids, trans-fatty acids, and cholesterol - all of which clog arteries - should be set at the lowest level possible.


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