Deadlines for companies to comply with FDA required changes to the Nutrition Facts Panel:
- Companies with $10 million or more in annual food sales should have complied by January 1, 2020
- Companies with less than $10 million in annual food sales have until January 1, 2021 to comply
- Exception for single ingredient products they have until July 1, 2021 to comply
Let’s review the changes the FDA is requiring!
Serving Per Container and Serving Size
The text is larger, they flipped the order of servings size and container size and updated the statement from Servings per Container: # to # servings per container.
Serving Size is calculated using the RACC (Recommended Amount Customarily Consumed) created by FDA for various categories.
To see the complete list of RACC by category click the link below:
This is important to understand because the FDA is requiring companies to use dual column labeling, meaning a column for serving size and another column for servings per entire container if the RACC of a product is packaged and sold in an individual container and has at least 200% and up to 300% of the RACC. For example RACC for chips is 30g so if a bag of chips contains 75g it would contain 250% RACC and would require to have 2 columns.
Check out the example below for a pint of Magnum Milk Chocolate Hazelnut Ice Cream. Most people can eat the entire pint of ice cream in one sitting, I know I have quiet a few times! You will be seeing more and more products with these dual columns to inform the consumer and not expect a consumer to multiply by serving size to figure out how many calories they are taking if they eat the entire container.
Calories
The text is much larger, a minimum of 22pts and bold so it is the most prominent text on the Nutrition Facts panel. The Calories from fat was also removed.
100% Daily Value (DV) based on a 2,000 calorie diet
- Total Fat changed from 65g to 78g
- Total Carbohydrate changed from 300mg to 275mg
- Sodium changed from 2400mg to 2300mg
- Potassium changed from 3500mg to 2300mg
- Calcium changed from 1000mg to 1300mg
- Vitamin D changed from 400IU to 800IU
Mandatory Vitamins & Minerals
Vitamin A and Vitamin C are no longer required and Vitamin D and Potassium are now required for all Nutrition Facts Panel
Sugar
A new line added “Added Sugar with 100% Daily Value of 50g. Sugar was changed to Total Sugar which is the total of naturally occurring sugar and the added sugar. An example of naturally occurring sugars are vegetable juice, fruit juice and concentrates and sugars added during the process are considered added sugars.
To learn more about the changes to the Nutrition Fact Panel: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-labeling-nutrition/changes-nutrition-facts-label