What are FOP Labels and How Do I Add Them to My Food Products?

With obesity rates higher than ever, it’s quite clear that the nutritional labels aren’t cutting it. It’s for this reason that the FDA is in the process of creating a proposal for updates to the food labels, the first in 20 years. The idea behind the changes is to implement nutritional labels that will be easier for consumers to read and understand.

One change that is being considered is front of package nutritional labels. A recent study compared literacy and comprehension of Front-of-Package (FOP) food labels versus the nutritional facts label (NFL) on the back of a product. The study found “parents demonstrated statistically significant improvements in comprehension using the FOP label for each category, with 87% getting all questions correct versus 67% using the NFL label.”

This is especially important since complex labels are cited as being one of the main causes for parents not reading the label to begin with. With 42% of parents reporting that the labeling influences their purchasing decision, implementing easier-to-read labels could potentially have a significant impact on childhood obesity.

What do you think? Will the FOP labels reduce childhood obesity or do you think parents will feed their children the same foods, regardless of the labels?