Do you look at the nutrition label on the food you’re eating?
According to health experts, most people don’t, or they do and don’t understand what the labels mean.
The problem is that these little info boxes don’t give a clear picture about how good, or bad something is for you.
We should know what we’re putting in our body, and how much.
But how do we make nutrition labels more informative? How can they do their job, and let people know the good, the bad, and the ugly about the food we’re eating.
This is what many food experts are addressing with a proposed revision to nutrition labels. Check out this article from The Wall Street Journal, How to Improve Nutrition Labeling on Food:
The Food and Drug Administration has proposed a revision to the existing facts panel, which has been standard on most food products since 1994. The changes include a redesign to make calorie information more prominent, as well as a change as to what is considered a single serving size to reflect the growth in the portion sizes people eat in the last two decades. The hope is that the changes will reflect the latest nutrition science and help people make smarter choices as the U.S. faces an obesity problem.
We can debate what should be stressed on nutrition labels, and what is considered bad or good food, but it’s very cool that nutrition experts are realizing that the labels we’ve been using for the last 22 years have not been working.
This is progress.
While I’m for a change to the current labels, I can’t help but feel like the best food you could be eating doesn’t come with a nutrition label. That’s because natural whole food isn’t produced, packaged, or labeled.