The Food and Drug Administration wants to update its rules for which foods can be branded “healthy.”
The proposed label rule aims, in part, to address a question as old as medicine: What does it mean for a food to be healthy? It would update the “healthy” label guidelines from 1994 to match up-to-date nutrition research — a notoriously messy and heavily debated field. Now, food makers can call their products “healthy” if they keep sodium, sugar, and other content below certain levels, and if they contain a “meaningful” amount of food from at least one of the food groups like fruits, vegetables, or dairy.
The change is a major win for certain food makers, including the company behind KIND bars, that had long been pushing the agency to update its label policies. KIND first filed a petition pushing the FDA to update its “healthy” label seven years ago, arguing that the previous regulations allowed some companies to tout specific nutrients in sugary cereals and sodium-flooded products that could have misled the public into believing those foods were healthy.
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