The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a final rule for including mandatory information about trans fat content in nutrition information labels on food packaging.
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From January 2006, all packaged foods sold in the US will be required to carry a label displaying the amount of trans fat the product contains.
Trans fat, or hydrogenated fat, is believed to raise levels of cholesterol, especially LDL, or “bad” cholesterol, which can lead to heart disease.
“Trans-fats are bad fats. The less trans fat you and I eat, the healthier we will be,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson was quoted by Reuters as saying.
He added that more legislation regarding nutrition information could be forthcoming. “This is just the beginning of a lot more rules and regulations about this. We are moving now very rapidly,” Thompson said.
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By GlobalDataThe new rule, which was first proposed in 1999, will come into effect a year after the Institute of Medicine had recommended.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest said the labels “will spur companies to reformulate products and to let consumers know how much of this dangerous and heretofore hidden fat is in packaged foods”.
“It will be hard, though, for people to tell if a given number of grams of trans fat is a lot or a little. Five grams may not seem like a lot, but it is,” CSPI nutrition policy director Margo Wootan was quoted by Reuters as saying.
The National Food Processors Association (NFPA) commended the FDA for establishing an “appropriate” date for the rule to come into effect.
“This rule’s effective date of 2006 will enable food companies to undertake the substantial process of redesigning and relabelling their products within a workable timeframe. However, we expect to see many products with redesigned Nutrition Facts labels come onto the market well before the deadline. NFPA is now in the process of providing our members with information and guidance on how to revise labels to accommodate trans fat declarations,” said Dr. Rhona Applebaum, executive vice president and chief science officer of the NFPA.
