Discover the Shocking FDA Food Label Changes You Need to Know Now!

The quest for healthier eating options has led to increased scrutiny of food labels, particularly the term "healthy." For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has regulated the use of this term, but recent updates to the requirements are poised to significantly change what qualifies as "healthy" on grocery store shelves. These changes, driven by evolving nutritional science and dietary guidelines, aim to provide consumers with clearer and more accurate information to make informed food choices.

The Old Guard: Outdated Nutritional Priorities

The previous FDA rule for using the word "healthy" on a food label focused on whether the grocery item contributed at least 10 percent of the established daily value of certain vitamins, calcium, iron, protein, or fiber. It also set limits for saturated fat, total fat, sodium, or cholesterol. This approach, established in the 1990s, emphasized specific nutrients without fully considering the overall nutritional value of the food.

Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, points out that the old rule was "dangerously outdated," reflecting dietary priorities from the 1980s that overemphasized concerns about fat and saturated fat. The old rule did not require a product to be low in added sugar to be labeled healthy. This meant that products high in added sugars could still be labeled as "healthy" if they met the other nutrient requirements.

Under these guidelines, some seemingly healthy whole foods, such as oranges, water, pistachios, and bananas, could not qualify for a "healthy" label, while processed foods with added nutrients could.

A New Era: Embracing Whole Foods and Limiting Added Sugars

Recognizing the need for modernization, the FDA announced a revised rule to update the "healthy" nutrient content claim to help consumers identify foods that are particularly useful as the foundation of a diet that is consistent with dietary recommendations. The updated criteria for the “healthy” claim are aligned with current nutrition science, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and the updated Nutrition Facts label, which requires the declaration of added sugars. The final rule was published with an effective date of February 25, 2025, but the FDA is postponing the effective date until April 28, 2025. Manufacturers who choose to use the “healthy” claim have three years to conform but can use the new criteria sooner.

Read also: High-Fiber Diet for Better Health

The revised rule promotes eating whole foods-foods that have not gone through a process that could remove nutrients such as fiber-and also low-sugar and low-saturated-fat foods that include enough protein, oil, grains, vegetables or fruit by volume.

The updated criteria for the “healthy” claim include nutrients to limit and identifies foods that help consumers to build a diet consistent with current recommendations. To bear the “healthy” claim, a food product needs to:

Contain a certain amount of food (food group equivalent) from at least one of the food groups or subgroups (such as fruits, vegetables, fat-free and low-fat dairy etc.) recommended by the Dietary Guidelines.
Adhere to specified limits for the following nutrients: saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.

The new rule places a greater emphasis on limiting added sugars. The agency consulted the Scientific Report of the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, the same report that the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are based on. A scientific committee analyzed 23 studies, and found that added sugar could increase overall caloric intake without a nutritional benefit like the ones you would get from a vegetable or whole grain. For instance, a food that meets the standards for protein-meat, seafood, beans, eggs, nuts or seeds-can’t have more than two percent of the recommended daily amount of sugar. Vegetable and fruit products must have no added sugar, and dairy and grain products can have up to five percent of the recommended daily value. Saturated fat content also is subject to sharp limits: five or 10 percent of the daily value depending on the type of protein.

Now, whole foods such as oranges, in addition to fish such as salmon, qualify as healthy. Foods that have higher amounts of added sugar or saturated fats than the rule allows can no longer use the word.

Industry Concerns and Potential Consumer Impact

While nutrition experts are generally optimistic about the new standards, the food industry has raised concerns. Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy and federal affairs at the Consumer Brands Association, which represents most companies selling packaged foods, argues that the sugar standards could induce consumers to buy products with more fat. She suggests that if foods currently able to describe themselves as "healthy" are barred from using the word because of sugar content, "consumers may migrate to full-flavor offerings that contain more saturated fat, added sugars and sodium."

Read also: Supporting Detoxification

Gallo adds that “the FDA’s proposed added sugars limit may reflect an inaccurate understanding of the products available in the marketplace and how truly restrictive FDA’s proposed added sugars thresholds are.” Indeed, very few cereals and yogurts that you see on grocery shelves meet the added sugar limits. After reviewing a draft version of the new rule, the Consumer Brands Association noted in response that one of its member companies applied the FDA’s proposed criteria to its 195 yogurt products and 104 cereals. Only three cereals and 24 yogurts had sugar levels that qualified as healthy.

Despite these concerns, the updated "healthy" claim can empower consumers by providing a quick signal on food package labels to help consumers identify foundational foods for building healthy dietary patterns. Courtney Pelitera, a registered dietitian specializing in sports nutrition and wellness nutrition, notes that the "healthy" label offers people an easy way to find some healthy foods. She says, “I can tell my patients that foods with a healthy label are a safe bet. It takes time, 15 to 20 minutes, [to] learn how to read a nutrition label,” and not everyone will take the time. “Any shortcuts are helpful.”

Beyond "Healthy": A More Comprehensive Approach to Food Labeling

While the "healthy" label can be a helpful tool, it is not a perfect indicator of overall nutritional value. The label leaves no room for foods that may not go all the way to meeting the standards but come close. For instance, a Trader Joe’s Chicken Burrito Bowl has 22 grams of protein, nine grams of fiber and three kinds of whole grains. In part because it uses full-fat cheddar cheese, however, it has 4.5 grams of saturated fat, or 23 percent of the total recommended daily value. That is slightly above the 20 percent (four-gram) recommended daily value required to qualify as healthy.

Consumer brands are finding other ways to show consumers which options are healthier than others. It’s not unusual to see a package advertise the number of grams of whole grains a product has or the lack of added sugar, even though it might not meet the healthy label. Front-of-package labels often show fiber, protein, saturated fats, and so on. “I can tell my patients to look for certain saturated fat, fiber and protein numbers on labels,” Pelitera says.

Mozaffarian recommends the FDA take a different approach to encourage products to change to healthier recipes. He suggests a front-of-package label that shows the actual servings of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and legumes and nuts and seeds in a package, giving companies an incentive to increase those ingredients. Another option is a graded system, and the Food Is Medicine Institute is testing one.

The Nutrition Facts Label: A Deeper Dive

The Nutrition Facts Label on packaged foods is based on dietary recommendations for Americans. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates what goes on the Nutrition Facts Label. Using the information on food labels can help you choose healthier foods which might lower your risk of getting cancer.

Here's a breakdown of the key components of the Nutrition Facts Label:

Serving Size: The serving size is a measured amount of the food, based on how much a typical person would eat. Some packaged food, like a frozen dinner, might contain only one serving. Serving sizes may be presented in cups or pieces, as well as the number of grams. It's important to compare the listed serving size to how much of a food you usually eat.
Calories: Calories measure how much energy you get from a serving of a food or drink. You can use the calorie count on a food label to see how it compares to the number of total calories you will eat in a day.
Nutrients: This section lists the amount of different nutrients contained in a food or drink. This list includes fats, sodium, carbohydrates, and protein.
Percent Daily Value (%DV): The percent daily value compares the amount of the listed nutrients in a food or drink to the recommended daily value (RDV). The RDV is the suggested amount of a nutrient that an average person should try to get each day. The percentage indicates how much of the RDV that 1 serving of the food or drink contains.
Footnote: The footnote explains that the Percent Daily Value (DV) is based on diet of 2,000 calories a day.

Decoding Common Label Terms

Free: This term means that a product does not have any of the named nutrient or has so little that it’s unlikely to make any difference to your body. For example, “calorie-free” means less than 5 calories per serving. “Sugar-free” means less than 0.5 grams of sugar per serving.
High: This term can be used if the food contains 20% or more of the Daily Value of a certain nutrient per serving.
Good Source: This term means that 1 serving of a food contains 10% or more of the Daily Value for a certain nutrient.
Light: This term can mean fewer calories, lower fat or reduced sodium. For foods that get at least half of their calories from fat, the total fat amount must be reduced by at least 50%. The term “light” can also be used when the sodium (salt) content of a food has been reduced by at least 50%.

Added Sugars

The Nutrition Facts Label shows the percentage of calories from added sugars. Naturally occurring sugars, such as those in fruit or milk, are not added sugars. Added sugars include brown sugar, maple sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, honey, malt syrup, and molasses. Keep your intake of added sugars to less than 10% of your total daily calories.

The Future of "Healthy": Potential Challenges and Opportunities

There is an overarching question about the new FDA rule: Will it pass muster with the incoming Trump administration, which has professed antipathy toward certain regulations? Some experts in food policy think it will be fine. However, others believe the Trump administration might make changes because the food industry does have concerns with parts of the rule. The FDA policy “could be subject to the Congressional Review Act, which means that when Republicans take control of both the House and Senate, they could potentially repeal it,” Lyons says.

Even if the rule stands as written now, new labels could take at least two years to change on products in the grocery store.

On a separate but related track, the FDA is also continuing to explore development of a symbol that manufacturers could use on food labeling to show that a product meets the criteria for the “healthy” claim. Having a standardized graphic to show that a food meets the criteria for the “healthy” claim would further support the FDA’s goal of helping consumers to identify food products that can be the foundation of healthy eating patterns.

Heart-Check Food Certification Program

The American Heart Association Heart-Check Food Certification Program is designed to help consumers make informed choices about the foods they purchase. To be certified, a product must meet specific nutrition requirements. The Heart-Check program has seven different categories of certification, and each category has a different set of nutrition requirements. All products must also meet government regulatory requirements for making a coronary heart disease health claim.

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