New ‘Nutrition Facts’ makeover just more bad news for consumers

Why the new FDA label is more dangerous than ever

I’ve never seen so much back-patting going on. You would think a cure for world hunger or childhood diseases had been found.

A parade of bigwigs, including FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and First Lady Michele Obama marched out in a White House PR conference last Thursday to make the exciting announcement.

After over a decade of sitting and thinking about it, the FDA is finally going to improve the Nutrition Facts Label that will make it easier to eat healthy!

Isn’t this great news?! Aren’t they all so proud?

Except it’s actually a big step in the wrong direction.

The real story here, one that everyone seemed to miss, is that this big publicity event wasn’t about progress. It’s just a distraction from the real labeling issue.

And the actual “fixes” the FDA is calling for — those aren’t doing anything to help, either.

Here’s what you need to watch out for…

Short on facts

The first ridiculous part of these proposed “improvements” looks like a joke.

Apparently we weren’t paying enough attention to calories. So they decided to make that the biggest thing on the facts panel.

So the single least important fact is now the one you have to see first.

The FDA’s ancient thinking that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie is straight out of the new Coke commercial.

But don’t worry, the font size isn’t the only worthless change.

The FDA says we all eat too much. So to fix that, it proposes to increase the “serving size” that’s listed at the top of this label.

That, it says, will somehow have us consuming less and losing weight.

But something’s wrong with this picture.

If the “official” serving sizes get bigger, how will that have us eating less? I wonder if the FDA really believes people will get that absurd logic. Now that pint of Ben & Jerry’s is two servings instead of four.

Let’s be honest…everyone considers it one. And it’s not like we are putting down our spoons any faster because it’s officially two.

The next change they cooked up is a really bad one, because it will have us looking at the wrong thing.

By making a place on the Nutrition Facts Label for “added sugars,” they somehow want us to believe that the only big danger comes from caloric sweeteners when you add them in.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fructose jolt from a glass of grape juice can be more than two Hershey bars! And, what about artificial sweeteners, like aspartame?

While they’ve got everyone looking at this new “added sugars” part, dangerous additives like aspartame will get a free ride. They won’t be listed in that section, so a casual glance at the new “facts” label will make a product with no added “sugars” look somehow healthier when it could contain a brain-damaging ingredient.

But here’s what I think is really going on, and why there’s this sudden “urgency” to keep everyone focused on the Nutrition Facts Label.

It’s the reddest of herrings. If you don’t want to talk about something, distract. And what they want to distract us from is demanding labeling for GMOs.

The agribusiness giants who profit from this GMO science like Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, well, they must been doing high-fives all last week. And it was a heck of a party for Big Food too!

What better way to distract then to change the conversation.

While consumers want GMO ingredients labeled, all the talk now is about serving sizes, calories, added sugars, and fonts.

You can read between lines that our health and making better choices wasn’t what anyone was trying to accomplish.