Health officials: Food label changes not enough

This handout image provide by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shows, from left, a current food nutrition label, a proposed label and an alternate label. Revamped food nutrition labels would change serving sizes for popular items like ice cream and sodas, make calories listing more prominent, and, for the first time, list any sugars that were added by the manufacturer. The overhaul of the omnipresent 20 year-old label comes as science has shifted. (AP Photo/FDA)

By Associated Press July 16, 2014 4 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) – Nutrition facts labels on food packages list ingredients and nutrient levels, but they don’t tell consumers outright if a food is good for them.

Public health advocates say that information is necessary to help consumers make healthy choices at the supermarket. They’d like to see labels on the front of packages and a clearer statement of which ingredients are good and which should be avoided.

The Food and Drug Administration is working on a label overhaul and has proposed two different versions.

Writing separately in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler and former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official William H. Dietz both say the FDA doesn’t go far enough. Dietz, the CDC’s former director of the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, is now with George Washington University.

Five ways these experts, and others, say nutrition facts labels could be improved: