“New” Food Labels

Why are those recalcitrant consumers ignoring FDA’s nutrition information and continuing to eat unhealthy diets?

After over thirty years of trying to get consumers to change their behavior based on Nutrition Facts Panels, FDA is revising a scheme that they fought fifteen years ago. The idea is to take elements from the back of the food packages, which failed to move the needle on poor diets, and move them to the front where it is harder to ignore them.  Consumers may report in a study that they are more “effective” when looking at them, much as they did thirty years ago, but that does not mean they will change their behavior. 

For one thing, they will still have to have a personal way of weighing whether, for example, they should buy something that is low in saturated fat but high in sugar? They will also have to do what they have “failed to do in thirty years, understand “Adult Daily Reference Values.” 

Read the full piece on my Substack here.