6 ms·

After 30 years, FDA overhauls guideline for the claim "healthy" on food packages

65 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

soared 2y ago
> Avocados, nuts and seeds are among products that will now qualify to use the “healthy” claim. Avocado, salmon and water are among the foods that will qualify for a “healthy” claim on food packaging. Yeah maybe there are some issues with government efficiency if it took 30 years for foods like this to be able to brand themselves healthy whereas white bread could false advertise with FDA approval.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Yep. It is a huge and corrupt bureaucracy. This should have taken literally a day’s worth of work. Even the time from when they proposed the rule change to now is over 2 years!
  - icegreentea2 2y ago
    I think this should have moved faster, but there's no way this is a single days work. Especially since a large part of the required work is meta work to show that they worked "properly". There are executive orders (and maybe laws? can't remember) that require all rule making to be subject to thorough cost benefit analysis. One of the required actions between a proposed and final rule is to review, reply to, and perhaps amend rules based on comments. The final report indicates 400 comments, and includes responses to basically all of them.
    - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
      All of that is evidence of the ineffectiveness of government bureaucracies. You’re describing the way things work today. I’m saying the way it works is broken and needs to change. Allowing claims that salmon or water is healthy shouldn’t take long.
      - BadHumans 2y ago
        Salmon can be accumulators of plastics and heavy metals. It is not as simple was labeling things as healthy or not healthy.
        blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
        Salmon is healthy and it is that simple. You’re bringing up unproductive questions that could go on forever about any food. If that’s the goal, we don’t need the bureaucracy. It’s the same outcome as shutting down this part of the agency, since they aren’t going to declare anything until decades after the world already moved on from their broken guidance and figured out that salmon or whatever else is healthy. No one serious questions that salmon is healthy, obviously. So let’s at least save the money.
        tayo42 2y ago
        Disagree that these are unproductive questions. For tuna it's recommended you don't eat it frequently becasue of high mercury levels. Why would not consider that for things like salmon?
        maerF0x0 2y ago
        And there's the wild vs farmed issue. And then it matters which waters they're in, and feed their given etc.
      - icegreentea2 2y ago
        I agree that it should go faster. Unfortunately government bureaucracies basically operate in low trust mode because of accumulated scar tissue from previous problems. Ripping out guard rails without building a high trust environment is asking for a speed run of all of the scar tissue to reform. The fact that you characterized a slow process as corrupt, when a huge amount of the slowness is because of mandated rules put in place to attempt to mitigate corruption is in itself a sign of the low trust hell that these regulators live in.
      - toast0 2y ago
  - nxobject 2y ago
    Either sadly or reassuringly, the same rulemaking making processes apply to both contentious things and relatively uncontroversial ideas like these. (Actually, this is an oversimplification, I think ED “Dear Colleague” letters don’t go through the full battery of established processes.)
- nerdponx 2y ago
  The biggest impediment to government efficiency is lobbying and propaganda by various special interests that do not have the public good in mind. Imagine how much would get done without those things.
hughrlomas 2y ago
FDA link: https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...
Eumenes 2y ago
Okay, now apply those guidelines to vulnerable members of society who purchase groceries via EBT/food stamps. I don't think soda, ultra processed foods, or candy would count?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I don’t think the healthy aspect affects eligibility food stamps. As I recall soda makes up 10% or more of all food stamp spending and the manufacturing have repeatedly successfully lobbied to keep sodas on there.
  - HappySweeney 2y ago
    That is because soda is used as a medium to convert the balance to cash.
    - potato3732842 2y ago
      Usually at $.50 on the dollar (same as the going rate for letting someone else use your EBT/SNAP but way more convenient).
aoppaol 2y ago
Related article about how the FDA has not formally reevaluated the safety of Red 40 in over a decade: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-red-dye-40-effects/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-red-dye-40-effects/
wgjordan 2y ago
From the FDA page [1]: > To meet the updated criteria for the claim, a food product needs to: > 1. contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruit, vegetables, grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and protein foods) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and > 2. meet specific limits for added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling#Updated https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...
- grecy 2y ago
  > recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Don’t we now know with 100% certainty the sugar lobby in America seriously manipulated the dietary guidelines?
  - bsuvc 2y ago
    Do you mean corn? Most American food has High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of Sugar.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It's still sugar, and the reason it's bad is because it's sugar rather than the exact composition.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        I think they're saying it is the corn lobby, not the sugar lobby, that distorted our diet guidelines so much. Corn = huge "real American" industry Sugar = not
        Retric 2y ago
        Corn is the US sugar lobby. Pretending they are different things is mostly just marketing at this point.
npalli 2y ago
The biggest changes seem (at least from the quiz) is to not automatically label high-fat food as unhealthy and correspondingly label high sugar foods as probably not healthy. Good changes.
ruffrey 2y ago
If you look at the table and do the math to convert obfuscated units, a 3/4 ounce serving of “whole grains” may have 5g of added sugar, which is 5/21.26 g or 23.5% added sugar. This seems like an obvious problem to me. Despite some progress with adding nuts and salmon.
boh 2y ago
Unfortunately the FDA has limited resource to actually police most of their existing guidelines and will have just as much trouble policing this one. Buy and cook raw ingredients as often as you can because the only way packaged foods make a profit is either to lower costs or increase prices, and neither option is to your benefit.
- kbelder 2y ago
  You forgot 'sell more'.
  - boh 2y ago
    Food is pretty low margin--selling more is often less lucrative than costing less, since selling more often costs more in marketing costs, hampering profitability.
- Jimmc414 2y ago
  The FDA gets 7.2 Billion dollars per year. The problem is probably that 3.3 Billion of that is paid by "User fees" which have effectively become a vehicle for industry lobbyists https://www.fda.gov/media/166050/download https://www.fda.gov/media/166050/download
robomartin 2y ago
I could be wrong on this, yet my impression is that the bureaucrats, given RFK's intentions, are in fear for their jobs and are looking to mitigate exposure by, well, actually starting to do their jobs. The damage cause to society by a vast array of foods is likely the top contributor to not only disease-caused mortality but the massive cost of providing healthcare. The appointment of someone like RFK, with a mission to push for a healthy food supply makes me hopeful that we will find a path to better results. On a personal level, after recognizing the terrible effects of bad food, I set out on a mission to change. I was type 2 diabetic and was also taking medication for hypertension. I changed my diet. Actively avoided everything outside what I call "basic" foods. I also added long term (7 to 14 day) fasting to help me push me over to the other side. It took a few months and effort. Today I am no-longer taking any medication and my blood tests come back with positive marks across the board. No more diabetes or hypertension. Before someone suggests some of the changes had to do with exercise, well, no, that was not the case. I was determined to understand this issue of proper nutrition. So, I stopped all exercise for several months in order to isolate effects. I only started walking a couple of miles per day once I was off all medications. I achieved this result sitting in front of my computer coding and working, with the only change being dietary. How many people out there have broken bodies and never-ending medical needs simply because they are eating horrible food? Well, if we are talking about diabetes --a metabolic disease-- the number is well over 35 million, with over a million people diagnosed every year and over 5000 children as well: https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/about/about-type-2-diabetes.html https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/about/about-type-2-diabetes.htm... And for the vast majority of cases, you can eliminate and reverse this with food. Look at the list of complications introduced by type 2 diabetes: - Heart and blood vessel disease - Nerve damage in limbs - Other nerve damage (heart, digestive system, etc.) - Kidney disease - Eye damage - Skin conditions - Slow healing - Hearing damage - Sleep apnea - Dementia https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20351193 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabet... And that's just one of the diseases with nutrition as a root cause. So, yeah, healthy food is important. The FDA needs to get a handle on this.
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  It's possible that the RFK thing is driving some urgency, but the timeline is broadly in line with their stated goals from their 2016 to 2025 strategic plan. They started this whole process with public consultation in 2017, and released the proposed plan back in 2022.
tayo42 2y ago
Isnt farmed salmon pretty iffy on healthy? I read something that basically made me stop eating farmed salmon. There seems to be a handful of farms near maybe Norway that the high end grocery stores carry that claim to be different but couldn't verify. They use like food coloring to make up for their unnatural farm diet.
- nerdponx 2y ago
  The FDA guidelines only look at macronutrients. There a lot of "unhealthy" things that would be considered "healthy" by both the old and new standards.
maerF0x0 2y ago
I'd wager it would have quite a bit more impact if all other foods had to put something like "Unhealthy!" on the nutrition info panel. Even better they could help break down the binary thinking and battles over single words and double down on something like nutrient density (quick hit from google: https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0390.htm https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0390.htm )
- djsavvy 2y ago
  I'm not quite sure about that — a lot of other countries have those sort of warning labels on foods or a comparison of the nutrition facts with healthier foods, and I'm not sure how much of an impact that label would end up having. I think it would be like the prop 65 stickers in California — it ends up becoming so ubiquitous it's effectively meaningless. I got a new espresso maker with a prop 65 label on it but am just ignoring it since I doubt it's actually leaching lead into my coffee despite the label saying it will.
  - immibis 2y ago
    I'm not sure what the relevant law is but a lot of packaged foods here (Germany) have nutrition scores A-E displayed prominently on the front corner. Apparently it's relative to a category, so they don't end up with E on all frozen pizzas and A on all frozen veggies, but can actually be used to see which frozen pizza is healthier.
Jimmc414 2y ago
One tangentially related example is Tic Tacs, which contain 94.5% sugar[0] but can legally advertise as "0 sugar" because the serving size is less than 0.5 grams under FDA labeling rules.[1] [2] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac [1] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.60 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR... [2] https://i.imgur.com/9p6dMgD.jpg https://i.imgur.com/9p6dMgD.jpg
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  i believe the ingredients list is ordered by amount of ingredient, so it's a quick scan to see if sugar (of whatever sort) is an added ingredient, despite the nonsense of numerical truncation being allowed in grams.
  - m463 2y ago
    new zero calorie sucrose serving size: 1 grain.
  - Jimmc414 2y ago
    but it is easy to miss. see [2] referenced image in the parent.
- Rendello 2y ago
  This came up on Reddit recently: > So I'm absolutely fucking obsessed with the Fruit Adventure flavor of Tic-Tacs. [...] I've been buying them in bulk, where each container has 200 candies each, and they come in bulk packs of 12 containers. I tend to eat them by the handful while I'm working or gaming, so in a day I can easily slam through 1-2 containers. > Over the past year, I found that I gained about 40lbs, and nothing about my eating habits had changed as far as I was aware. I told my doctor about it and she was a bit worried, so she had me do a bunch of bloodwork to see if there was a reason why I gained so much weight in a short period of time. Everything came back normal. She referred me to see a weight loss doctor who would also have me see a dietician. > I had been working with the dietician for a few months now, and we have me keep a food log. I had a virtual visit with her today and during it, I was fiddling around with an empty container to keep my hands busy. She saw it and asked where I got such a large container from, so I told her about it and how I eat 1-2 of those per day. She asked why those weren't on my food tracker and I said it was because they're 0 calories so they wouldn't count. Reddit OP goes on to discover what you posted. One of the comments in the thread was: > I just finished a diploma in a medical field, we were warned about people like you OP. I wish I was joking. https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1cck4u8/tifu_by_not_telling_my_doctor_how_many_tictacs_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1cck4u8/tifu_by_not_t...
J_Shelby_J 2y ago
All I want is a pie chart showing percent of calories from macros. 10% fat, 50% protein, 40% carbs.
underseacables 2y ago
Maybe they will one day get around to deciding what constitutes a new dietary ingredient for dietary supplements, it's only been 30 years.
naming_the_user 2y ago
If whole milk, chicken, beef etc aren’t on the list then their definition of healthy is nonsense. For some reason people seem obsessed with overcomplicating their diets. You don’t need to subsist on a diet of rabbit food to be healthy, you just don’t want to be constantly having deep fried crap, donuts, Doritos, etc, and definitely not 3000 cal a day unless you’re an athlete or heavy manual worker. It baffles me that we’ve had to invent a whole term “ultra processed” to describe things that a generation or two would just be called junk food.
- autoexec 2y ago
  We've had to invent the term because "junk food" isn't well defined or understood. A lot of ultra processed food wouldn't be considered junk food by many people and some junk food like cakes and pastries might be considered processed but still not be considered "ultra processed". As a new term, the definition of "ultra processed" is still being narrowed down and clarified, but at least it isn't saddled with several decades of past definitions or ideas of what junk food is or isn't. It's become clear that ultra processed foods have major negative impacts on health in ways other foods don't. My guess is that as research into ultra processed foods continues we'll eventually end up with even more new terms to drill down into specific types of foods, production methods, and even marketing practices that are harmful/unhealthy.

65 points by Jimmc414 2y ago

> Avocados, nuts and seeds are among products that will now qualify to use the “healthy” claim. Avocado, salmon and water are among the foods that will qualify for a “healthy” claim on food packaging. Yeah maybe there are some issues with government efficiency if it took 30 years for foods like this to be able to brand themselves healthy whereas white bread could false advertise with FDA approval.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Yep. It is a huge and corrupt bureaucracy. This should have taken literally a day’s worth of work. Even the time from when they proposed the rule change to now is over 2 years!
- icegreentea2 2y ago
  I think this should have moved faster, but there's no way this is a single days work. Especially since a large part of the required work is meta work to show that they worked "properly". There are executive orders (and maybe laws? can't remember) that require all rule making to be subject to thorough cost benefit analysis. One of the required actions between a proposed and final rule is to review, reply to, and perhaps amend rules based on comments. The final report indicates 400 comments, and includes responses to basically all of them.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    All of that is evidence of the ineffectiveness of government bureaucracies. You’re describing the way things work today. I’m saying the way it works is broken and needs to change. Allowing claims that salmon or water is healthy shouldn’t take long.
    - BadHumans 2y ago
      Salmon can be accumulators of plastics and heavy metals. It is not as simple was labeling things as healthy or not healthy.
      - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
        Salmon is healthy and it is that simple. You’re bringing up unproductive questions that could go on forever about any food. If that’s the goal, we don’t need the bureaucracy. It’s the same outcome as shutting down this part of the agency, since they aren’t going to declare anything until decades after the world already moved on from their broken guidance and figured out that salmon or whatever else is healthy. No one serious questions that salmon is healthy, obviously. So let’s at least save the money.
        tayo42 2y ago
        Disagree that these are unproductive questions. For tuna it's recommended you don't eat it frequently becasue of high mercury levels. Why would not consider that for things like salmon?
      - maerF0x0 2y ago
        And there's the wild vs farmed issue. And then it matters which waters they're in, and feed their given etc.
    - icegreentea2 2y ago
      I agree that it should go faster. Unfortunately government bureaucracies basically operate in low trust mode because of accumulated scar tissue from previous problems. Ripping out guard rails without building a high trust environment is asking for a speed run of all of the scar tissue to reform. The fact that you characterized a slow process as corrupt, when a huge amount of the slowness is because of mandated rules put in place to attempt to mitigate corruption is in itself a sign of the low trust hell that these regulators live in.
    - toast0 2y ago
- nxobject 2y ago
  Either sadly or reassuringly, the same rulemaking making processes apply to both contentious things and relatively uncontroversial ideas like these. (Actually, this is an oversimplification, I think ED “Dear Colleague” letters don’t go through the full battery of established processes.)
nerdponx 2y ago
The biggest impediment to government efficiency is lobbying and propaganda by various special interests that do not have the public good in mind. Imagine how much would get done without those things.

hughrlomas 2y ago

FDA link: https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...

Eumenes 2y ago

Okay, now apply those guidelines to vulnerable members of society who purchase groceries via EBT/food stamps. I don't think soda, ultra processed foods, or candy would count?

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I don’t think the healthy aspect affects eligibility food stamps. As I recall soda makes up 10% or more of all food stamp spending and the manufacturing have repeatedly successfully lobbied to keep sodas on there.
- HappySweeney 2y ago
  That is because soda is used as a medium to convert the balance to cash.
  - potato3732842 2y ago
    Usually at $.50 on the dollar (same as the going rate for letting someone else use your EBT/SNAP but way more convenient).

aoppaol 2y ago

Related article about how the FDA has not formally reevaluated the safety of Red 40 in over a decade: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-red-dye-40-effects/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/what-is-red-dye-40-effects/

wgjordan 2y ago

From the FDA page [1]: > To meet the updated criteria for the claim, a food product needs to: > 1. contain a certain amount of food from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruit, vegetables, grains, fat-free and low-fat dairy and protein foods) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and > 2. meet specific limits for added sugars, saturated fat and sodium. [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critical-foods/use-term-healthy-food-labeling#Updated https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-critica...

grecy 2y ago
> recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Don’t we now know with 100% certainty the sugar lobby in America seriously manipulated the dietary guidelines?
- bsuvc 2y ago
  Do you mean corn? Most American food has High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of Sugar.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    It's still sugar, and the reason it's bad is because it's sugar rather than the exact composition.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      I think they're saying it is the corn lobby, not the sugar lobby, that distorted our diet guidelines so much. Corn = huge "real American" industry Sugar = not
      - Retric 2y ago
        Corn is the US sugar lobby. Pretending they are different things is mostly just marketing at this point.

npalli 2y ago

The biggest changes seem (at least from the quiz) is to not automatically label high-fat food as unhealthy and correspondingly label high sugar foods as probably not healthy. Good changes.

ruffrey 2y ago

If you look at the table and do the math to convert obfuscated units, a 3/4 ounce serving of “whole grains” may have 5g of added sugar, which is 5/21.26 g or 23.5% added sugar. This seems like an obvious problem to me. Despite some progress with adding nuts and salmon.

boh 2y ago

Unfortunately the FDA has limited resource to actually police most of their existing guidelines and will have just as much trouble policing this one. Buy and cook raw ingredients as often as you can because the only way packaged foods make a profit is either to lower costs or increase prices, and neither option is to your benefit.

kbelder 2y ago
You forgot 'sell more'.
- boh 2y ago
  Food is pretty low margin--selling more is often less lucrative than costing less, since selling more often costs more in marketing costs, hampering profitability.
Jimmc414 2y ago
The FDA gets 7.2 Billion dollars per year. The problem is probably that 3.3 Billion of that is paid by "User fees" which have effectively become a vehicle for industry lobbyists https://www.fda.gov/media/166050/download https://www.fda.gov/media/166050/download

robomartin 2y ago

I could be wrong on this, yet my impression is that the bureaucrats, given RFK's intentions, are in fear for their jobs and are looking to mitigate exposure by, well, actually starting to do their jobs. The damage cause to society by a vast array of foods is likely the top contributor to not only disease-caused mortality but the massive cost of providing healthcare. The appointment of someone like RFK, with a mission to push for a healthy food supply makes me hopeful that we will find a path to better results. On a personal level, after recognizing the terrible effects of bad food, I set out on a mission to change. I was type 2 diabetic and was also taking medication for hypertension. I changed my diet. Actively avoided everything outside what I call "basic" foods. I also added long term (7 to 14 day) fasting to help me push me over to the other side. It took a few months and effort. Today I am no-longer taking any medication and my blood tests come back with positive marks across the board. No more diabetes or hypertension. Before someone suggests some of the changes had to do with exercise, well, no, that was not the case. I was determined to understand this issue of proper nutrition. So, I stopped all exercise for several months in order to isolate effects. I only started walking a couple of miles per day once I was off all medications. I achieved this result sitting in front of my computer coding and working, with the only change being dietary. How many people out there have broken bodies and never-ending medical needs simply because they are eating horrible food? Well, if we are talking about diabetes --a metabolic disease-- the number is well over 35 million, with over a million people diagnosed every year and over 5000 children as well: https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/about/about-type-2-diabetes.html https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/about/about-type-2-diabetes.htm... And for the vast majority of cases, you can eliminate and reverse this with food. Look at the list of complications introduced by type 2 diabetes: - Heart and blood vessel disease - Nerve damage in limbs - Other nerve damage (heart, digestive system, etc.) - Kidney disease - Eye damage - Skin conditions - Slow healing - Hearing damage - Sleep apnea - Dementia https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabetes/symptoms-causes/syc-20351193 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/type-2-diabet... And that's just one of the diseases with nutrition as a root cause. So, yeah, healthy food is important. The FDA needs to get a handle on this.

icegreentea2 2y ago
It's possible that the RFK thing is driving some urgency, but the timeline is broadly in line with their stated goals from their 2016 to 2025 strategic plan. They started this whole process with public consultation in 2017, and released the proposed plan back in 2022.

tayo42 2y ago

Isnt farmed salmon pretty iffy on healthy? I read something that basically made me stop eating farmed salmon. There seems to be a handful of farms near maybe Norway that the high end grocery stores carry that claim to be different but couldn't verify. They use like food coloring to make up for their unnatural farm diet.

nerdponx 2y ago
The FDA guidelines only look at macronutrients. There a lot of "unhealthy" things that would be considered "healthy" by both the old and new standards.

maerF0x0 2y ago

I'd wager it would have quite a bit more impact if all other foods had to put something like "Unhealthy!" on the nutrition info panel. Even better they could help break down the binary thinking and battles over single words and double down on something like nutrient density (quick hit from google: https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0390.htm https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0390.htm )

djsavvy 2y ago
I'm not quite sure about that — a lot of other countries have those sort of warning labels on foods or a comparison of the nutrition facts with healthier foods, and I'm not sure how much of an impact that label would end up having. I think it would be like the prop 65 stickers in California — it ends up becoming so ubiquitous it's effectively meaningless. I got a new espresso maker with a prop 65 label on it but am just ignoring it since I doubt it's actually leaching lead into my coffee despite the label saying it will.
- immibis 2y ago
  I'm not sure what the relevant law is but a lot of packaged foods here (Germany) have nutrition scores A-E displayed prominently on the front corner. Apparently it's relative to a category, so they don't end up with E on all frozen pizzas and A on all frozen veggies, but can actually be used to see which frozen pizza is healthier.

Jimmc414 2y ago

One tangentially related example is Tic Tacs, which contain 94.5% sugar[0] but can legally advertise as "0 sugar" because the serving size is less than 0.5 grams under FDA labeling rules.[1] [2] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic_Tac [1] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.60 https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFR... [2] https://i.imgur.com/9p6dMgD.jpg https://i.imgur.com/9p6dMgD.jpg

jjtheblunt 2y ago
i believe the ingredients list is ordered by amount of ingredient, so it's a quick scan to see if sugar (of whatever sort) is an added ingredient, despite the nonsense of numerical truncation being allowed in grams.
- m463 2y ago
  new zero calorie sucrose serving size: 1 grain.
- Jimmc414 2y ago
  but it is easy to miss. see [2] referenced image in the parent.
Rendello 2y ago
This came up on Reddit recently: > So I'm absolutely fucking obsessed with the Fruit Adventure flavor of Tic-Tacs. [...] I've been buying them in bulk, where each container has 200 candies each, and they come in bulk packs of 12 containers. I tend to eat them by the handful while I'm working or gaming, so in a day I can easily slam through 1-2 containers. > Over the past year, I found that I gained about 40lbs, and nothing about my eating habits had changed as far as I was aware. I told my doctor about it and she was a bit worried, so she had me do a bunch of bloodwork to see if there was a reason why I gained so much weight in a short period of time. Everything came back normal. She referred me to see a weight loss doctor who would also have me see a dietician. > I had been working with the dietician for a few months now, and we have me keep a food log. I had a virtual visit with her today and during it, I was fiddling around with an empty container to keep my hands busy. She saw it and asked where I got such a large container from, so I told her about it and how I eat 1-2 of those per day. She asked why those weren't on my food tracker and I said it was because they're 0 calories so they wouldn't count. Reddit OP goes on to discover what you posted. One of the comments in the thread was: > I just finished a diploma in a medical field, we were warned about people like you OP. I wish I was joking. https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1cck4u8/tifu_by_not_telling_my_doctor_how_many_tictacs_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/1cck4u8/tifu_by_not_t...

J_Shelby_J 2y ago

All I want is a pie chart showing percent of calories from macros. 10% fat, 50% protein, 40% carbs.

underseacables 2y ago

Maybe they will one day get around to deciding what constitutes a new dietary ingredient for dietary supplements, it's only been 30 years.

naming_the_user 2y ago

If whole milk, chicken, beef etc aren’t on the list then their definition of healthy is nonsense. For some reason people seem obsessed with overcomplicating their diets. You don’t need to subsist on a diet of rabbit food to be healthy, you just don’t want to be constantly having deep fried crap, donuts, Doritos, etc, and definitely not 3000 cal a day unless you’re an athlete or heavy manual worker. It baffles me that we’ve had to invent a whole term “ultra processed” to describe things that a generation or two would just be called junk food.

autoexec 2y ago
We've had to invent the term because "junk food" isn't well defined or understood. A lot of ultra processed food wouldn't be considered junk food by many people and some junk food like cakes and pastries might be considered processed but still not be considered "ultra processed". As a new term, the definition of "ultra processed" is still being narrowed down and clarified, but at least it isn't saddled with several decades of past definitions or ideas of what junk food is or isn't. It's become clear that ultra processed foods have major negative impacts on health in ways other foods don't. My guess is that as research into ultra processed foods continues we'll eventually end up with even more new terms to drill down into specific types of foods, production methods, and even marketing practices that are harmful/unhealthy.