What’s Wrong With the New Nutrition Labels

Dear Natural Health Solutions Reader,

Nutrition labels, first mandated in 1990, have always had a fundamental flaw…

The vast majority of the food you should eat is not the sort that has a nutrition label!

In other words, fresh, unprocessed meats, fish, eggs, vegetables, and fruits don’t typically come with labels that list nutrients.

That’s because these real, natural foods are highly variable, so their nutrients can’t be listed on a box or wrapper.

Eggs, for example, vary widely in nutrient levels, depending upon whether the chicken that laid them ate worms in a pasture or GMO corn in a nightmarish gulag an industrial laying operation.

(Pastured eggs, as I’ve pointed out, can have three times more omega-3 fatty acids and eight times more beta-carotene than industrial eggs. But even among pastured eggs, nutrient levels vary.)

With this sort of natural, elemental food, the only useful label is one specifying its origin. It’s handy to know if beef is grass-fed and grass-finished, or if a chicken or egg is pasture-raised, or if a vegetable comes from an organic farm. None of this info is listed on a nutrition label.

So the first thing to understand about the FDA’s new food-labeling proposal is that it should affect only a tiny fraction of what you actually eat.

Beyond that, are the changes worthwhile?

In a word… no.

The Same Old Mistakes

The label swap is mandated to start on July 26. Here’s a fictionalized example of the old and new labels:

There’s too much wrong here to list it all, but there are two highlights of the changes:

• A massive, misplaced focus on calories: Calories on the new label are now in huge type. A better choice would be to eliminate them entirely and list grams of carbohydrate instead. Calories from carbohydrate are much more lipogenic (fat-forming) than are calories from fat, because carb calories stimulate insulin, the hormone that conducts fat into the cells. As Gary Taubes, author of the brilliant book Why We Get Fat, has succinctly put it, “The point to keep in mind is that you don’t lose fat because you cut calories; you lose fat because you cut out the foods that make you fat — the carbohydrates”

• Continued demonization of saturated fat: The new label singles out saturated and trans fats as the two fat types that need monitoring. This is only half correct. Saturated fat has proved to be harmless, and while it’s still a good idea to avoid trans fats, they are being phased out by most manufacturers.

I don’t wish to be totally cynical, however. There is one thing to like about this label:

• A new emphasis on sugar content: I like the fact that added sugars are now easy to identify, but again — if one eats unlabeled foods, one can be confident that the added sugar total is always zero grams.

Bottom Line

In a statement, first lady Michelle Obama said the new label “is going to make a real difference in providing families across the country the information they need to make healthy choices.”

No, it won’t. The concept that this change is the royal road to “healthy choices” contains an embedded assumption — that Americans will continue to primarily eat processed, industrial food that comes in boxes.

My message to Americans would be if it bears a nutrition label, it’s already highly suspect, and aside from the listing of added sugars, most of the information on the new label is based on outdated, discredited science.

To the maximum extent that your lifestyle allows, eat fresh, local, organic food from a natural foods store, farmers market, or — best of all — your own backyard garden. That change — rather than changes to a nutrition label — is the one that will truly improve both your own health and that of your loved ones.

Sincerely,

Brad Lemley

Editor, Natural Health Solutions