FDA to change food nutrition label

This is not original reporting. All information has been compiled from The Washington Post news article "FDA Aims At Obesity Epidemic: Food Labels to Be Revised to Ease Calorie Counting" published March 13.

The FDA initiated a new campaign targeting America's increasing obesity problem March 12, according to The Washington Post. Their plan calls for changing food nutrition labels to make calorie counting easier.

The campaign involves specifying which foods can be dubbed "low" or "reduced" in the amount of carbohydrates, clarifying serving sizes on containers and supporting the development and investigation of new weight-loss methods.

The move was sparked by warnings from federal health officials, who claimed that nearly two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and that obesity is becoming the leading cause of preventable death. "Far too many Americans are literally eating themselves to death," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson told the Post. "The epidemic of obesity threatens the health of millions of Americans."

Critics of the new plans assert that the measures depend too much on voluntary action and are thus too lenient. "Relying on junk-food marketers' self-policing is naïve and one of the things that helped Americans waddle into the obesity epidemic in the first place," explained Michael F. Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest to the Post.

Recently, the House of Representatives approved a measure preventing food companies from being sued by people who blame them for their weight issues.