Front-of-package nutrition labels advance to White House

The Food and Drug Administration has completed a proposed rule creating front-of-package nutrition labels to help Americans select healthier foods and avoid diet-related disease. It’s now up to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to release the proposal for public input. Front-of-package nutrition labeling was a key deliverable of the National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, and President Biden should make it a hallmark of his administration.  

As for the future of the policy under our next president, if the Make America Healthy Again movement is serious about reducing chronic, diet-related disease in this country, it should quickly embrace the promise of mandatory, interpretive front-of-package nutrition labels. The most important thing we can do to reduce diet-related chronic disease is to encourage consumers to consume fewer products with excess sodium, added sugars, and saturated fat. And front-of-package labeling would make avoiding such products much easier for harried shoppers. In some of the 16 countries that have them, front-of-package labels have been associated with more healthful product reformulations and consumer purchases.

While we haven’t seen the FDA’s proposal, we expect it will include evidence-based labels that are mandatory and identify when foods are “High” in nutrients linked to chronic disease.