The Food and Drug Administration should be given more regulatory clout over food labeling, according to two reports that suggest consumers are not getting enough protection from false or misleading health claims.
Regulators now allow various kinds of promotional language on food labels, including regular “health claims” as well as “qualified health claims.” The latter category of claims requires less scientific support, so long as the weaker evidence is noted on the label. But the Government Accountability Office has found that the varying kinds of claims may be a recipe for food label confusion.
“Consumers cannot consistently distinguish between health claims, which have significant scientific agreement, and qualified health claims, which have lower levels of scientific evidence,” the GAO concluded in a report titled, “FDA Needs to Reassess Its Approach to Protecting Consumers from False or Misleading Claims.”
As the Center for Public Integrity points out, the FDA currently has the burden of proving that food claims are misleading and it does not have the legal authority to compel a company to provide its scientific support. The GAO is recommending that Congress grant the FDA authority to make food companies provide supporting evidence when making a health claim.
In a separate report on the labeling of children’s foods, a nutrition advocacy group accused food companies of making deceptive claims in the absence of FDA oversight.
The report, from the Prevention Institute of Oakland, Calif., examined the nutritional content of 58 familiar products, whose labels make “better for you” claims. It applied the criteria of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines and the National Academies of Science, which have standards for sugar, sodium and fiber content.
The result: Only nine products met all of the applicable standards, it said, and 49 products failed to meet one or more.
One encouraging sign for nutrition advocates came Thursday from the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart. Claiming that it was inspired by Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity, the company announced that it will lower the amount of fats, sugars and salts in the food it sells.
Wal-Mart plans to reformulate its private-label products as well as those of its suppliers to reduce sodium levels by 25 percent and sugars by 10 percent. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest, gave the company’s move a cautious thumbs-up. “You have this huge company using its leverage to move the food industry in the right direction,” he told ABC News.
