Food Labeling Program Shelved After FDA Warns It’s ‘Misleading’

A food industry labeling program designed to highlight and promote healthier foods but which the Food and Drug Administration said allowed misleading nutritional claims to appear on food packages has been put on the shelf, officials said.

Some of the largest food companies in the world, including Kellogg’s, Kraft Foods, and General Mills, had participated in the program, called Smart Choices. Foods that met nutritional standards for the program could feature a logo with a green check mark on their packaging to tell consumers that the products were approved by the program.

But just days after the FDA blasted Smart Choices and said it was investigating the validity of nutritional claims on the front of packages and would enforce laws against false or misleading advertising, the people behind the program agreed to stop the labeling effort.

The Smart Choices program said today it would “voluntarily postpone active operations and not encourage wider use of the logo at this time by either new or currently enrolled companies,” according to a Reuters news report.

Officially, the program said it was halting operations so that it could pour its energy into developing a new system with a single universal symbol to give consumers an easier way to quickly and accurately identify nutritious foods. Officials are still working on creating such a labeling notice.

“It is more appropriate to postpone active operations and channel our information and learnings to the agency to support their initiative,” said Mike Hughes, chair of the Smart Choices program, according to Reuters.

FDA Cracking Down on Food Label Claims

The FDA has been increasingly going after food makers for nutritional claims it finds false or misleading.

For example, in May, the agency took aim at boxes of Cheerios cereal, which have for years included claims that eating the food can “lower your cholesterol 4 percent in six weeks” and otherwise improve heart health. The FDA said information of specific health benefits on Cheerios boxes amounted to unapproved drug claims and ordered General Mills to knock it off. The company defended its use of the specific benefits of eating Cheerios but agreed to remove the claims until it could clear the information with the FDA.

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