ALP: Food Product Labeling
Question
Our new snack product is healthy and low-fat and we’d like to call that out on the front. What should we know before we start creating the label?
Answer
You need to know what a nutrient content claim is. A nutrient content claim is one that expressly or implicitly characterizes the level of a nutrient in food. Generally, the Food & Drug Administration, which oversees the labeling of food and beverages, allows a restricted list of nutrient content claims as long as certain conditions are met. When the food meets the conditions specified in FDA regulations, those claims may be made using FDA-approved language. Allowed claims include, for example: “good source,” “high,” “more,” “light” or “lite,” “free,” “low,” “fewer,” “less,” “reduced,” “low sodium,” “contains 100 calories,” “high in oat bran,” and “healthy, contains 3 grams of fat” as well as specific content claims for calories, sugar, sodium, fat, fatty acid, and cholesterol. If you have a new nutrient content claim that you’d like the FDA to consider, the agency will review a petition if it’s supported by analytical data. So, unless a nutrient content claim is specifically allowed by FDA regulation or is approved in the petition process, it is prohibited.
You might also use a relative nutrient content claim such as “more,” “added,” “fortified,” “enriched,” “extra,” “plus,” “reduced,” “less,” or “fewer.” This claim compares the level of nutrients in your product to the level of that nutrient in an appropriate reference food, a competitor’s for example. If you choose to make such a comparison claim, the label must identify the reference food and the percentage or fraction of the amount of the nutrient in the reference food by which the nutrient in the labeled food differs. For example, “50 percent less fat than (reference food)” or “1/3 fewer calories than (reference food).” This information must be next to the most prominent claim on the label and regulations dictate the print size.
Be careful when using these claims because the FDA requires certain disclosure statements when a label makes a nutrient content claim about one aspect of the product but the product contains levels of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, or sodium in excess of levels set by the FDA. In those circumstances, the label must include a disclosure statement. If your low-in-calorie snack is high in sodium, your disclosure would say, for example, “See nutrition information for sodium content.” The purpose of the disclosure statement is to call the consumer’s attention to one or more nutrients in the food that may increase the risk of disease or a health-related condition that is diet-related.
Keep in mind that some statements on food are not nutrient content claims and are not subject to FDA regulation. One example is a claim that a specific ingredient is absent from a food - as long as the purpose of the claim is to help consumers avoid certain substances because of food allergies, food intolerance, religious beliefs or dietary practices such as vegetarianism - for example, “100 percent milk free.” Another example is a claim that does not have any nutritive function, such as “contains no preservatives” or “no artificial colors.”
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