The brave new world of FDA nutrition regulation--some thoughts about current trends and long-term effects

This article reviews long-term trends at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerning regulation of nutrition, and considers how these trends may affect products of the food industry in the decades ahead. Among the topics discussed are the FDA's rules concerning the provision of basic, standard format nutrition information ("nutrition labeling") on food products. These rules have changed dramatically over the past 50 years from a period when no information was required to a period when information was required only if a nutrient claim was made or if a nutrient was added to the product to the new FDA regulations that become effective in 1994, which require standardized nutrition labeling on most food products in interstate commerce. There have also been important shifts in the procedures concerning government regulation of nutrition-related labeling. In general, previously a food company was free to provide truthful and nonmisleading labeling claims about the nutrition content of a food product, leaving it to FDA to police the market and to take regulatory action against any labeling that the agency deemed either to be false or misleading or to constitute an unauthorized drug claim. In contrast, under new FDA regulations, it will become automatically illegal to use any "health claim" or "nutrient content claim" in food labeling unless the claim has been approved in advance by an FDA regulation.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)