The FDA May Add a Warning Label to Some of Your Favorite Foods — Here’s What This Means

Sometimes navigating a nutrition label can be tricky for folks experiencing a dietary-related illness or just wanting to be informed about what goes into their bodies. To understand most of them, you need to sift through a lot of jargon — and that takes time. That is why a new federal mandate may pass to ease this package-reading burden.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to announce changes to food and drink nutrition labels this fall to help ease public confusion. On November 16, 2023, the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA hosted a virtual meeting to outline the proposed label changes. These new markings intend to help consumers quickly identify the details of food packaging; it should be especially helpful for busy shoppers.

The label has color-coded markings signifying the amount of saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars per serving. For example, if a bag of chips contains five percent or less of the daily value of nutrients, it will receive a green “low” label. If it contains six to 19 percent of your daily value of nutrients, you’ll see a yellow “medium” label. If it contains 20 percent or more of your daily value of nutrients, you’ll find a red “high” label. The labels also have “high in” to indicate products that have 20 percent or more of the recommended daily amount per serving.

According to the Washington Post, certain food companies are against this potential new mandate, suggesting that it will just drive up the costs of certain goods. The news outlet also mentioned that experts shared that the new labels are confusing to read compared to labels that have done this successfully in other countries.

For now, the FDA has not sent a draft of the proposed mandate to the White House budget office for review. Once that occurs, the FDA will issue a public release with more information.