FDA considers symbols as guide to healthful food

WASHINGTON – Next month, General Mills Inc. and Kellogg Co. will begin emblazoning their breakfast cereals with symbols that summarize complex nutritional information – part of the growing use of logos to steer harried grocery shoppers toward healthier choices.

The proliferation of such symbols is a worldwide phenomenon with government regulators in Britain, Sweden and elsewhere establishing logo systems that concisely indicate how nutritious food products are. In the United States, however, corporations have been left to devise their own schemes. That’s led to a patchwork of systems that some fear further confuses consumers already unsure about how to eat wisely.

On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration took a first step toward clearing matters up, inviting food companies, trade groups, watchdog organizations, medical experts and its overseas counterparts to share how front-label symbols, like the “traffic light” system used in Britain, can improve public health.

The FDA stressed the meeting was a preliminary step as it considers whether to establish a national symbol system. Any action is likely years away – and, even then, any system is likely to be voluntary.

Absent federal action, food manufacturers and retailers have taken matters into their own hands. PepsiCo Inc. uses the “Smart Spot” symbol on diet Pepsi, baked Lay’s chips and other products. Hannaford Bros., a New England supermarket chain, uses a zero to three-star system to rate more than 25,000 food items it sells. And in Britain, the government has persuaded some food companies to use a ranking system with green, yellow and red lights to characterize whether a food is low, medium or high in fat, salt and sugar.

“A whole range of consumers like it and can use it. And the important thing is that we know that it is actually changing what is happening in the marketplace,” said Claire Boville of Britain’s Food Standards Agency, citing increased sales of foods flagged with the green and yellow symbols. Last week, Hannaford reported similar results.

Overall, there is little consistency among the competing symbol regimes in use, according to the FDA, as it works to glean more information about them.

“We really don’t have adequate information about the various programs to understand how their criteria work and how they are used and understood by consumers … and how they may effect market choice,” said Michael Landa, deputy director of the FDA’s food office.

One lawmaker said he would move forward with legislation compelling the FDA to establish a single set of nutrition symbols.

“The proliferation of different nutrition symbols on food packaging, well-intended as it may be, is likely to further confuse, rather than assist, American consumers who are trying to make good nutrition choices for themselves and their families. FDA should take meaningful steps to establish some consistency to these many different systems of nutrition symbols,” Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate agriculture committee, said in a statement.

A petition filed in November by the Center for Science in the Public Interest also asked the FDA to create a national front-label symbol system.

Absent congressional action, Jacobson said it could take a decade for the FDA to set up such a system.