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• Posted December 19, 2024

FDA Updates Meaning of 'Healthy' on Food Labels

THURSDAY, Dec. 19, 2024 (HeathDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration wants to redefine the meaning of healthy food, issuing a new rule Thursday that changes the way food companies can claim their products are indeed nutritious.

What foods will qualify for the new designation?

Under the final rule, pretty much everything in the produce section -- whole fruits and vegetables -- would be considered healthy, as would other nutrient-rich foods like whole grains, dairy, eggs, beans, lentils, seafood, lean meat, nuts and seeds.

"It's critical for the future of our country that food be a vehicle for wellness. Improving access to nutrition information is an important public health effort the FDA can undertake to help people build healthy eating patterns," FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, said in an agency news release announcing the new rule. "It is vital that we focus on the key drivers to combat chronic disease, like healthy eating."

"Now, people will be able to look for the ‘healthy’ claim to help them find foundational, nutritious foods for themselves and their families," he added.

The idea is to simplify things for shoppers who are confused by nutrition fact labels that don’t give any real-world guidance on whether one product is better than another, the agency added.

Nutrition experts welcomed the change.

“It’s a terrific advance,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University in Boston, told NBC News. “For the first time, FDA will be judging foods not based on a handful of negative nutrients like calories or fat or salt, but on whether the food has healthy ingredients.”

The previous rule had a cap on total fat, which excluded products with heart-healthy fat, such as avocados, NBC News reported. Products could also qualify if they had at least 10% of the daily value for certain vitamins, calcium, iron, protein or fiber.

Manufacturers took advantage of that earlier rule.

“That led companies to fortify junk food and call them healthy,” Mozaffarian explained. Fruit juice could be labeled as “healthy” if they had enough vitamin C, despite a tremendous amount of added sugar.

The new rule eliminates that possibility. Products that can no longer claim to be healthy include fortified white bread and highly sweetened yogurts and cereals.

It’s one of the final moves from the Biden administration, and it's likely to be embraced by the incoming Trump administration, NBC News reported.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for replacing ultra-processed food with healthier alternatives, to fight chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes.

Companies have until 2028 to comply with the new rule, and the FDA said it is also working on a healthy symbol that companies can add to packaging in the future.

“The updated definition should give consumers more confidence when they see the ‘healthy’ claim while grocery shopping," Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association, said in a statement after the new rule was announced. "And we hope it will motivate food manufacturers to develop new, healthier products that qualify to use the 'healthy' claim."

More information

The World Health Organization has more on a healthy diet.

SOURCE: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, news release, Dec. 19, 2024; NBC News