Will Your Product Be Affected by the Proposed Nutrition Label Changes in US & Canada?

All food and supplement suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers labels be affected by the finalized nutrition label changes, in both the United States and Canada. Companies need to be aware of the proposed changes in order to think strategically about the ability for products to maintain claims in the U.S. and Canada, as well as the opportunity for products to take advantage of the nutrient and health claims available for their product. FDA has stated that “January 1, 2018 will be the uniform compliance date for food labeling regulations that are issued in calendar years 2015 and 2016.”[1] In Canada, however, the passage of the Nutrition Facts Table (NFt) package is largely dependent on the October 2016 election; the new government elected may decide to suspend the existing proposed revisions to the NFt for changes, or even send the entire package of revisions back to the drawing board.[2]

Since National Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) was implemented in 1994, the American diet has been very much altered, and FDA has also found that consumption can be influenced by nutrition information. FDA looked at a study by USDA that measured how consumers changed their consumption of fat and cholesterol in response to nutrition information flags on grocery store shelves. This study found “fat consumption fell an average of 1.25 percent and cholesterol an average of 0.1 percent for consumers at that grocery store in response to the nutrition values posted at the point of sale.”[3] Due to this information, FDA feels that it is important to update the nutrition label information to more adequatel