AP-NA
GEN US NUTRITION SYMBOLS U.S. government agency considers food-label symbols
to steer shoppers toward healthier eating
By ANDREW BRIDGES
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. government health officials on Monday
considered whether adding symbols with nutrition information
to food labels, like a traffic light system used in Britain,
might help shoppers make healthier food choices.
The
Food and Drug Administration opened a two-day meeting to collect
comments from food companies, trade groups, watchdog organizations,
medical experts and its overseas counterparts on the topic.
Any action is likely years away.
Some
food manufacturers and retailers already have begun labeling
foods with symbols to indicate how nutritious they are. PepsiCo
uses the "Smart Spot" symbol on diet Pepsi, baked
Lay's potato chips and other products. Hannaford Bros., a
New England supermarket chain, uses a zero to three-star system
to rate more than 25,000 food items it sells. And in Britain,
the government has persuaded some food companies to use a
"traffic light" symbol. That ranking system relies
on green, yellow and red lights to characterize whether a
food is low, medium or high in fat, salt and sugar.
"A
whole range of consumers like it and can use it. And the important
thing is that we know that it is actually changing what is
happening in the marketplace," said Claire Boville, of
Britain's Food Standards Agency, citing increased sales of
foods flagged with the green and yellow symbols.
Worldwide,
there is little consistency among the competing symbol regimes
in use, according to the FDA, as it works to glean more information
about them.
"We
really don't have adequate information about the various programs
to understand how their criteria work and how they are used
and understood by consumers ... and how they may effect market
choice," said Michael Landa, deputy director of the FDA's
food office.
While
Landa said the agency is in information-gathering mode, one
lawmaker said he would move forward with legislation compelling
the FDA to establish a single set of nutrition symbols.
"The
proliferation of different nutrition symbols on food packaging,
well-intended as it may be, is likely to further confuse,
rather than assist, American consumers who are trying to make
good nutrition choices for themselves and their families.
FDA should take meaningful steps to establish some consistency
to these many different systems of nutrition symbols,"
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate agriculture
committee, said in a statement,
A
petition filed in November by the Center for Science in the
Public Interest also asked the FDA to create a national front-label
symbol system. Such a system should complement but not replace
the sometimes dizzying information packed into the nutritional
facts labels most foods now bear, said Michael Jacobson, the
advocacy group's executive director.
"You
could send a child to the store with 20 bucks and say, 'Johnny,
you can buy whatever you want as long as it has a green dot
_ and you can get one red-dot food,'" Jacobson said.
Absent
congressional action, Jacobson said it could take a decade
for the FDA to set up such a system.
___
On
the Net:
FDA
public hearing information: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/ 7/8comm/registe6.html
