A healthy diet is essential to maintaining a strong immune system. Yet, with such a variety of products filling the shelves making claims about nutritional benefits, how do can you tell what’s actually good for you? A new rule issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aims to help consumers make better decisions by updating the the rules regarding which products can be labeled as healthy.
The new rule made a couple of key changes:
1) There is no longer a limit on total fat, a restriction that meant that sources of healthy types of fat such as avocados didn’t qualify as “healthy”.
2) Previously, a product could be labeled as “healthy” if it contained at least 10% of the recommended daily value for calcium, iron, protein, fiber or specific vitamins. Many companies exploited this by fortifying junk food with these nutrients and claiming it is healthy. The updated rule no longer allows this.
The updates were welcomed by many nutrition experts. “It’s a terrific advance,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University. “For the first time, FDA will be judging foods not based on a handful of negative nutrients like calories or fat or salt, but on whether the food has healthy ingredients.”
Full Story: HealthDay
