Front-of-Package Labeling and Sodium Targets

Summary

Front of Package Labeling

In March 2023, the FDA issued draft guidance to provide industry with the agency's current thinking on how and when to use Dietary Guidance Statements in food labeling, and to ensure that Dietary Guidance Statements promote good nutrition and nutritious dietary practices. Dietary Guidance Statements are used on food labels to provide consumers with information about foods or food groups that can contribute to a nutritious dietary pattern to help consumers make healthier choices more easily.

The draft guidance provides the agency’s best thinking about the use of statements, such as "make half your grains whole grains," and "eat a variety of vegetables." The draft guidance recommends that foods with Dietary Guidance Statements contain a meaningful amount of the food or category of foods that is the subject of the statement and that they also not exceed certain amounts of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

The recommendations in the guidance can enhance consistency in the use of such statements and consumer understanding. As a part of this initiative, the FDA is expected to propose a change to prepackaged food sold in America: a requirement that the front of the packages display key nutrient information in addition to the nutrition label that's already on the back.

Healthy Labels

The issue of "healthy" foods and "ultra-processed" foods will most likely play a significant role regardless of the next administration. Both parties have begun to focus on ultra-processed foods as an issue area. The Academy currently doesn't have stated and public positions on issues of "healthy" labels or that of ultra-processed foods. However, it is likely that there will be more and more outreach to the Academy on these issues as it becomes more salient to both the general public and policy makers.

Sodium Reduction Targets

In August 2024, the FDA proposed new 3-year, voluntary sodium reduction targets for 163 categories of foods, which, if achieved by the food manufacturing and restaurant industries, would bring Americans' sodium consumption to safer levels according to the Agency.

The FDA described the new sodium reduction targets as Phase II of an effort beginning in earnest in 2021, when the FDA finalized voluntary targets for the industry across 163 categories of foods over a two-and-a-half-year period. At the time, the agency estimated that, if fully achieved, those initial targets would reduce Americans' sodium consumption from approximately 3,400 milligrams of sodium per day to about 3,000 mg per day, though not nearly as low as the 2,300 mg recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Full compliance with the new draft guidance would further reduce average intake to 2,750 mg per day. CSPI would like to have seen the FDA set a more aggressive target.

The agency also released what it calls a Preliminary Assessment of Progress made from 2010 to 2022. The FDA asserts that 40 percent of food categories are within 10 percent of their Phase I targets. Their data also show that, across all food categories, more categories showed decreases (52 percent) than increases (34 percent) in their sales-weighted mean sodium content, although the magnitudes of decreases and increases are unclear. Most of the decreases in sodium content in the US food supply appear to have occurred in packaged foods as opposed to in restaurants, where nearly half of food categories increased in sodium, more than the fraction that decreased.