Michelle Obama and the FDA Get Real on Serving Sizes with Proposed Changes to Nutrition Facts

Source: Clutch

I spend hours in the supermarket reading boxes. Going over ingredients, costs per gram, country of origin, and nutrition, on everything I buy. These shopping trips take a long time and though my fascination with back of the box literature drives my partner insane, I make the time because I like to know what I'm getting.

Michelle Obama and the FDA recently released proposed changes to US nutritional labeling that are intended to make it quicker to size up your goods and make an informed decision before purchase. The main updates from the original 1993 format are to emphasize calories, make serving sizes more realistic and highlight added sugars.

source: FDA

The bold over sized calorie figures follow on from what we've seen recently on restaurant menus and are arguably a simplified tactic to fight obesity - but hey, it's a start.  And as far as the effort to make serving sizes more realistic and easier to understand, I am totally with them on that and will gladly put my calculator away.

Source FDA

But I'm not completely sold on the plan to remove the  to remove the 'calories from fat' information. A spoke person said that this was done because they think that the 'type of fat' is more important than the amount. There is definitely truth to this, but lots of people struggle with 'good fats' just as much as 'bad fats', thinking they can eat all the cashews they want because it's vegetable fat. The thing about it is though that 'good fat' works the same as 'bad fat' when you're trying to get in your jeans. Still it's a start.

It's all under review at the moment, with the FDA seeking feedback for 90 days and plans still in the works for when it will come in practice, but if it does, it will effect more than 700,000 products on a shelf near you.