FDA Data Glut

This article in the New York Times reports on the Food and Drug Administration efforts to encourage manufacturers to post calorie counts on the front of food packages. They also want to standardize serving sizes.

That’s a great strategy for the FDA to use to counteract obesity, because there’s just not nearly enough information on the labels to begin with. I look at this actuarial table of percentages and micromanagement and it gives me a migraine.

Honestly, how can anyone but a research scientist keep up with all of this?

And, if you actually read the microfiche, those relative ratios of this fat and that fat and this carbohydrate and that carbohydrate, are listed as a percentage of a 2000 calorie per day diet. So you have to know how many calories you will consume in a day, divide that by 2000, then multiply back by the percent “Total Fat” or whatever in the product.

So yes, I feel that I need way more data to choke on or, gosh, I may make a wrong move in choosing my food products. I need someone to tell me whether my Buffalo hot wing flavored potato chips have 10 chips per serving or 12, because that will keep me from munching my way to the bottom of the sac during the Super Bowl party.

Listen, data glut is not going to help your average Wal-Mart shopper confront weight problems any more effectively. Even if the FDA listed the calorie content in 24 point bold font with wingdings on the end, it won’t prevent them from getting their venti bucket o’ caramel macciato milkshake.

This is because our recommendations come from science data, but must be used by, and useful to, ordinary people who don’t have the time or inclination to crunch numbers at the checkout line. So, although the effort is well-intentioned, it won’t make a dent, scratch, or scuff to our expanding weight problems.

Consider this. Our obesity rates continue to climb, year by year. And yet, food product labels were made mandatory in 1990; Trans Fats were added to them in 2003; and now Pepsi, Kraft, General Mills, American Heart Association, National Organic Association, Kellogg’s, Sara Lee, and a slew of regional grocery chains have all added their own labels, icons, and cheery green check marks to let you know how many grams of x, y, or z is in your food product.

More nutrition label minutia has not slowed our expanding weight problems, and there’s no reason to believe it will in the future. The FDA is simply at a loss, and this is all they know to do.


For more information: Click here to visit Will Clower’s website.