For a food product to qualify as ‘healthy’ it must fall below certain limits on added sugars, sodium and saturated fat.
Hispanolistic/Getty Images
At a time when more than half of the American diet comes from processed, packaged foods, the Food and Drug Administration has new rules aimed at helping people make healthy choices in the grocery store.
The agency has updated the definition of what counts as healthy. Food companies can voluntarily use a “healthy” claim on their packages if their products meet the new definition.
For a food product to qualify as “healthy” it must contain certain amounts of at least one of the food groups included in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. This includes dairy, grains, fruits, vegetables and protein foods such as beans, lean meats, nuts, seafood, and soy.
It’s been three decades since the agency updated its standards on what qualifies as healthy. Back in the 1990s there was a big focus on limiting all types of fats, but as nutrition science has evolved, there’s recognition of the benefits of healthy fats found in nuts and seeds, fatty-fish and olive oil.
“Things like salmon and eggs wouldn’t have qualified under our previous definition,” explains Claudine Kavanaugh, director of the office of nutrition and food labeling at the FDA. “Science has changed,” she says. The focus is more on reducing saturated fat, not total fats.
“This is the first rule-making that updates those claims in 30 years,” Kavanaugh says.
The hope is that the new rules will foster a healthy food supply.” I think the healthy claim can be a real quick signal to help empower consumers,” Kavanaugh says.
She says it’s a “priority” for the agency to also release a healthy icon or symbol that could also appear on packages that meet the new definition of healthy. The agency continues to work on this initiative.
In announcing the new rule, the FDA’s Jim Jones pointed to the toll of poor diet in the U.S. “The FDA recognizes that diet related diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, are the leading cause of disability and disease in the United States,” he said.
