The time is ripe to transform food labels

Last week, members of Congress reintroduced the Food Labeling Modernization Act, a groundbreaking bill that would revolutionize the way we think about food labels. After being introduced in every Congress since 2013, this year’s reintroduction, sponsored by Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Ben Cardin (Md.), Ed Markey (Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), comes with a renewed sense of purpose. Nutrition policy is gaining increased attention from policymakers, and the bill comes at a time primed for transformative change.

Policymakers — from the White House to federal agencies to states and localities — are recognizing the urgent need to combat diet-related disease in America. Poor diet is, after all, the leading preventable risk factor for death in the U.S.

In September, the Biden-Harris administration convened the first White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in more than 50 years, generating commitments from government and industry to increase healthy eating by 2030. And in January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans to reorganize food functions within the agency, including by developing a new Center for Excellence in Nutrition to elevate the agency’s efforts to promote healthier diets.

States and localities have ramped up efforts to pass innovative policies to support nutrition as well, like a law in Maryland’s Montgomery County requiring healthier restaurant meals for kids; Perris, California’s ordinance requiring healthier items in supermarket checkout aisles; New York City’s Sweet Truth Act requiring warnings for certain products from chain restaurants that are high in added sugars; and a bill introduced by the New York state legislature to address predatory food marketing targeting children.

The Food Labeling Modernization Act of 2023 builds on this momentum by aligning food labeling regulations with the latest nutrition science and leveraging food labels to encourage healthier product formulations, counter misleading claims, and promote informed choices. The bill’s signature initiative would establish a standard front-of-package nutrition labeling system for packaged foods sold in the U.S. This labeling system would complement the existing Nutrition Facts panel and would clearly convey when foods have high levels of sodium, added sugar or saturated fat and nutrients that are overconsumed, linked to chronic disease, and recommended to be limited in the diet.

Similar requirements have already been implemented in several countries, including Mexico, Israel and Chile. Research from Chile — one of the first countries to implement the labels — found a 7 percent reduction in products that were high in calories, sugar, sodium or saturated fat across the country’s food supply after implementing mandatory “High in” labels, with the highest percent reduction found in total sugar (a 15 percent difference between 2013 and 2019). There were also significant declines in daily per capita purchases of calories, calories from sugar and saturated fat and milligrams of sodium. In June, Canada became one of the latest countries to adopt mandatory front-of-package nutrition labeling requirements, which must be implemented by 2026.

Over a decade ago, the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) recommended that the U.S. adopt front-of-package labeling. Today the recommendation has widespread bipartisan public support. In March 2023, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) commissioned a national survey to assess public support for mandatory front-of-package labels — 75 percent of consumers overall, including majorities of Democrats (83 percent), Republicans (68 percent) and independents (73 percent), said they would either “strongly support” or “somewhat support” such a policy in the United States. Prominent public health and consumer groups such as the American Heart Association, American Public Health Association and Consumer Federation of America have also expressed their support for mandatory front-of-package labeling.

In response to a regulatory petition filed by CSPI and other groups calling for front-of-package nutrition labeling, as well as to a similar directive in the Biden-Harris Administration National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health, the FDA recently announced plans to conduct research on front-of-package label designs — the first step toward a full proposal. While some of the potential designs appear reasonable, the agency has also included designs similar to the food industry’s “Facts Up Front” system, which have already shown to be less effective at informing consumers and influencing their behavior compared to the type of system proposed in the Food Labeling Modernization Act.

There’s more than enough research to support the adoption of mandatory front-of-package labeling in the U.S. The surest path to such a label is for lawmakers across the political spectrum to heed their constituents by supporting mandatory front-of-package nutrition labeling and co-sponsoring the Food Labeling Modernization Act.

Eva Greenthal, M.S., M.P.H., is senior policy scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Peter Lurie, M.D., M.P.H., is president the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Previously, he was associate commissioner for Public Health Strategy and Analysis at the Food and Drug Administration, and deputy director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group.