FDA Allows Health Claims for Food Labeling and Marketing
​​​[Posted on: Friday, May 4, 2018]

FDA wants to encourage food manufactures to be able to claim the health benefits of their products. Claims about the nutritional properties of food and ability to reduce the risk of health-related conditions can be made. This is a new and significant development. In the past, FDA had objected when food manufacturers claimed that their food could help with disease conditions based on their nutritional properties. Claims for cholesterol lowering properties of Cherios, or flu-management properties of orange juice were objected by FDA. Companies even got in trouble for using the word “Healthy” on their food labels. It seems that those days are gone. In the new policy, claims can show the link between consumption of a given food ingredient and a given disease. FDA’s announcement cited examples such as claims about “the relationship between folate and the reduction in risk of a child being born with certain birth defects, or high fiber and low fat diets reducing the risk of developing some types of cancer.” Such claims should be based on science, self generated or published but the standard of proof need to support such claims has been seemingly relaxed. This is a “healthy” development, pun intended. In the past FDA has over-extended its mandate for enforcing general health claims for food products, in most opinions, particularly when there was no known or perceived risk to the consumer. This policy will be very welcome to the food industry which has long wanted FDA to be lenient with regards to food claims. Many of the food claims are based on modern scientific research so unless a manufacture is trying to deceive, FDA should let the consumer decide what food they want to purchase and eat.