The FDA Just Redefined “Healthy”—But How?

In the ongoing war of labelling regulations (usually with advertisers on one side and regulators on the other), the FDA has updated what’s required in order to label a food as “healthy”.

Here’s what they’re now* requiring:

To bear the “healthy” claim, a food product needs to: 

• Contain a certain amount of food (food group equivalent) from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.  
• Adhere to specified limits for the following nutrients: saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

Source: FDA | Press Releases | FDA Finalizes Updated “Healthy” Nutrient Content Claim

*however, manufacturers have 3 years to conform, which if we’re being cynical about it, looks suspiciously like just short of a US presidential election cycle so that actual enforcement will be someone else’s problem.

Will it help?

Maybe! It’s not too dissimilar to the “traffic light system” already in use in Europe, although that currently emphasizes the absence/presence of “bad things” e.g. saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

It has its faults, because for example…

• not all saturated fat is bad, and a jar of coconut oil is now definitely going to get labelled as very unhealthy
• low-sodium salt is, ironically, going to to get flagged as being very high in sodium and therefore unhealthy

This latter is because on a g/100g basis, a product that’s ⅓ sodium chloride is going to have a lot of sodium, even if it’s approaching ⅔ less sodium than the product it’s (healthily!) replacing.

However, on a large scale, these kinds of problems are surely going to be small next to (hopefully) manufacturers scrambling to find ways to cut down on the saturated fats, sodium, and added sugars.

You may be wondering…

What will they replace them with?

Sometimes, companies trying to make something healthier will mess up, like when the health risks of smoking hit public consciousness, one cigarette company had the bright idea of putting asbestos in their filter tips, to market them as healthier. So, could something similar happen here?

• Saturated fat: definitely could; because the health benefits/risks of different kinds of fats and their constituent fatty acids are a lot more nuanced than just “saturated” vs “mono-/polyunsaturated”, it is definitely possible that companies may replace healthier saturated-heavy fats with less healthy unsaturated fats, depending on what is cheaper.
  • See also: Can Saturated Fats Be Healthy?
• Sodium: probably not; likely go-to replacements for sodium chloride will be potassium chloride (healthier than sodium chloride) and MSG (has an unearned bad reputation in the US, but is healthier than sodium chloride).
  • See also: Monosodium Glutamate: Terrible Health Risk Or Sinless Flavor-Enhancer?
• Added sugars: probably—things get very complicated very quickly when it comes to artificial sweeteners, and also the crux will definitely lie in what gets defined as an “added sugar”; watch out for a rise in the use of things that slide by the definition of added sugar while still being chemically (and, which is important, metabolically) the same thing.
  • See also: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

Well that doesn’t sound great

It doesn’t, but on the flipside, the positive inclusions will probably be mostly good.

For example, the only way to get a “healthy” labelling in including fiber is to include more fiber, same with vitamins and minerals.

The low-fat dairy thing could possibly get abused (much like with the general “low-fat” trend of the 80s).

The “portion of fruit” thing will need to be carefully defined to avoid running straight back into the “this is just added sugar by another name” problem; mostly that it’ll need to still include the same amount of fiber as was in the whole fruit, gram for gram.

See also: What Matters Most For Your Heart? ← it’s about fiber, not salt or saturated fats!

Take care!