FDA: HIDDEN FATS MUST BE LISTED ON FOOD LABELS

As you may have heard by now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced yesterday that it will soon require manufacturers of most conventional foods to list in the Nutrition Facts panel the trans fat content of the product, in addition to the information about the product's overall fat content and saturated fat content. While this is certainly a good move, it upsets me that the FDA is giving manufacturers until January 1st of 2006 to include the new information on nutritional labels. If the FDA feels that it's important for the information to be included on the label, then why not require that it be done sooner?

According to the FDA, estimates are that by three years after the compliance date of 1/1/06, trans fat labeling will have prevented between 600 and 1,200 cases of coronary heart disease and 250 to 500 deaths each year in the U.S.A alone. In addition to the lives saved each year, the FDA also estimates that the changes in regulations will save between $900 million and $1.8 billion each year in medical costs and lost productivity.

So why do we have to wait until 2006?

2006 does seem like a long time, but maybe it's partly because of practical reasons. It's easy to manufacture food, but how easy is it to measure the chemicals in the food? Many hours spent in an advanced chemistry lab have taught me that this is no trivial task.

I would imagine if they spend X amount of hours determining how much Red #4 or whatever its called to put in the food the manufacturers surely could have spent equal amount of time determining how much trans fat is in the food.