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Fat in the fire

Food and Drug Administration considers food labeling and packaging changes to highlight the dangers of obesity.

Violators (upper left) on these packages from Frito-Lay show the calorie content for these Quaker products.
Violators (upper left) on these packages from Frito-Lay show the calorie content for these Quaker products.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is starting to burn considerable bureaucratic calories on an initial regulatory action that would eventually require changes in how calories and serving sizes are listed on food product labels and packages. But the FDA effort, announced in early April, has food companies doing a slow burn of a different sort.

Regina Hildwine, senior director of food labeling and standards at the National Food Processors Assn. (NFPA), complained: “We in the food industry are in the middle of changing labels having to do with the listing of trans fats. We are not eager to change labels every couple of years. The FDA needs to be more deliberative on calories.”

Not only are food companies unenthusiastic about the FDA possibly dictating changes on how calories are listed on a product label or packaging, they also have differences of opinion among them on the importance of making calorie declarations more prominent. “There is some level of disagreement among individual companies,” notes Hildwine.

In fact, the two advance notices of proposed rulemaking the FDA issued in April are so controversial that food packagers are refusing to comment on them. Spokesmen for companies such as ConAgra, Kraft, Frito-Lay, and Unilever USA—all of whom, by the way, are pressing the FDA to allow nutrition statements about carbohydrates on packages—declined to discuss possible changes in calorie listing rules.

Changing foods or servings

The fissures in the food packaging industry over the importance and need for more prominent calorie disclosure and more accurate listings of serving size are reflected in the press release Kraft Foods, Inc., Northfield, IL, issued a couple days after the FDA published its two ANPRs in April. The Kraft press release trumpeted Kraft-funded research that showed people would have more success losing weight if they focused on changing the types of food they ate, not by counting calories and eating smaller portions. It is the South Beach Diet ethic.

Kraft’s underlying message—one that many food companies are propounding via reformulated products and packaging—is that people are apt to lose more weight if they change the type and amount of carbohydrates they eat and replace refined grains with the slower-digesting and more nutrient-rich whole grains and focus on lean sources of protein.

Kraft has been reformulating and repackaging using the South Beach Diet as a yardstick. For example, on March 28, Kraft’s Nabisco unit introduced KidSense Fun Packs, what the company termed “sensible snack choices” consisting of new varieties of Nabisco favorites—Teddy Grahams Cubs (Cinnamon), Kraft Cheese Nips Sport Crisps, and Smilin’ Ritz Bits.

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