Monmouth Times

New Brunswick, NJ – Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) held a press conference today to call for more transparent food labels and better guidance for consumers. In April, Pallone introduced the Food Labeling Modernization Act to make food labels more consumer friendly and easier to understand. The bill would require updated front-of-package food labeling and updates to the ingredient list on packaged foods, including calorie and key nutrient information so that consumers can clearly distinguish between foods of greater and lesser nutritional value.

The updates would take into account calories, saturated and trans fats, sodium, and added sugars and may include a visual system to scale or rank foods according to their overall health value. The bill would also require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to define the term “natural” and amend the term “healthy” to account for whole grains and added sugars. Currently, food labels do not always provide consumers with the information they need to make healthy choices and can include misleading marketing claims.

“Consumers have a right to know what’s in the food they are buying. We’ve all struggled to navigate now’s opaque food labels and ‘healthy’ marketing claims during trips to the grocery store,” Pallone said. “The Food Labeling Modernization Act will update our nation’s food labeling requirements to provide consumers with the transparency they deserve so they can make the right food choices for their families at the grocery store. I look forward to working with my colleagues to finally update our nation’s food labels.”

In the United States, obesity and diet-related disease are responsible for hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year as well as increased health care costs. However, food labeling requirements do not always provide families with the information they need to make healthy choices. The majority of the food labeling provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act have not been updated since 1990 and in some cases have not been changed since 1938. As a result, labels do not provide the information that now’s consumers need to evaluate and compare products in order to make healthy choices.

To help consumers select healthy products, the Food Labeling Modernization Act would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to establish a single, standard front-of-package nutrition labeling system in a timely manner for all food products required to bear nutrition labeling. The bill would also strengthen current law to address trends in marketing that confuse or mislead consumers when they are attempting to compare food products.

The Food Labeling Modernization Act is supported by Center for Science in the Public Interest, Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America, Environmental Working Group, International Fresh Produce Association, Gluten Free Watchdog, Celiac Disease Foundation, and Beyond Celiac.

Over the last few years, the Food and Drug Administration has updated some requirements for the Nutrition Facts label on packaged foods. The Food Labeling Modernization Act would build on that initial progress by ensuring consumers have access to easy-to-read information in order to make informed purchasing decisions.

Original source can be found here