Eating Well
THE soap opera continues.
The story so far: The Food and Drug Administration must come up with a new format for nutrition labeling, one that will, in the bureaucratese of a Government document, "require the required information to be conveyed to the public in a manner which enables the public to readily observe and comprehend such information and to understand its relative significance in the context of a total daily diet."
Or to put it in English, the new labels must provide enough information so that people can make food choices within the context of their daily diet. One way to do so is to provide some kind of reference -- a daily guide, also called "daily values" -- by which people can see how a particular food stacks up compared with the daily recommended amounts for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, fiber and protein.
When we last looked at this issue, Michael Taylor, a deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Adminstration, said the agency knew that no single format was ideal.
"What is still under discussion is the best way to provide the information in context," he said. "So far, our thinking has been daily values, but there is a downside. The question is, how do you pick a number for fat and saturated fat? A single number is not the number for all consumers."
Mr. Taylor and his boss, Dr. David Kessler, Commissioner of the F.D.A., and others are asking these questions: Which format will provide the best information and protect the most vulnerable people? How can the agency get the public, and not just special interest groups, to comment on the newest proposed formats?
On Monday, the Federal Register published the agency's findings so far on the proposed label formats, describing the drawbacks of each in mind-numbing detail. At the back of the document, however, several new formats were displayed. They are interesting for different reasons.
Of particular concern is the one suggested by the United States Department of Agriculture, which is opposed to listing a daily guide. The agency proposes a format, similar to the current label, that has several lines at the bottom with advice like "eat a wide variety of foods" and "choose a diet low in fat (30 percent of calories or less)." That advice is hardly specific enough to be of help.
Many of the foods regulated by the agency, like meat and poultry, would not look too good if their fat content was compared to the recommended daily intake. A large hamburger with cheese, for example, has about 34 grams of fat. For a woman, that would be more than half the amount of fat she should eat in one day.
The Agriculture Department appears to believe that repeating general information about dietary guidelines fulfills the requirement to provide enough information to help people make choices in the context of a daily diet. But lawyers at both the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration say the label does not fulfill the mission set out in the regulations.
F.D.A. officials were not willing to comment publicly this week about the Agriculture Department's proposed label, but it was clear that the agency preferred one with a daily guide, as opposed to one in which the consumer would have to calculate what percentage of calories in a food comes from fat. The Agriculture Department "is hoping people won't do the calculations," one official said, adding: "They're right. They won't."
But two of the F.D.A.'s newest proposals for label formats, illustrated above, are quite helpful. They are alternatives to the plan of basing the daily values on a single caloric intake. One would provide separate daily values for women and men, based on daily diets of 2,000 and 2,500 calories, respectively. It would suggest, for example, that women eat less than 65 grams of fat a day, and men less than 80 grams.
The other alternative would offer a range of daily values based on diets of 1,600 to 2,800 calories. For someone on a 1,600-calorie diet, the fat level would be 53 grams; for someone eating 2,800 calories a day, fat could go as high as 93 grams. But nowhere on the label would it be clear that women belong in the 1,600-calorie range and men in the 2,800-calorie range.
Neither of these formats is perfect. For instance, as the number of calories one consumes a day rises, the fat component is not necessarily supposed to rise at the same rate. In other words, even though 93 grams of fat is 30 percent of 2,800 calories, 93 grams of fat is too much for anyone.
One other format proposal uses values pegged to a single diet. Earlier versions of this idea used a diet based on the average mean intake of 2,350 calories a day. The F.D.A. is now proposing to use 2,000 calories, closer to the daily figure for most women.
"All of the public health people said, overwhelmingly, that 2,350 was too high," Dr. Kessler said. "Women are in the 1,900-to-2,200 range, so you can't have 2,350. It's misleading to women." The agency believes that it is better to err on the side of fewer calories than more calories.
The Agriculture Department has told the F.D.A. that its second choice is a label similar to either of the F.D.A.'s latest proposals.
No matter what format is chosen in the fall, Dr. Kessler said he hoped the agency could get women to understand that the upper limit for their daily fat intake is 65 grams, and for men, 75 to 80 grams.
The Food and Drug Administration is eager to hear what the public thinks of the new format proposals. Comments may be submitted by Aug. 19 to: Dockets Management Branch, HFA 305, Food and Drug Administration, Room 1-23, 12420 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, Md. 20857.