At its recent annual meeting, the American Medical Association (“AMA”) agreed to urge the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) to adopt more accurate labeling standards regarding trans fats and saturated fats used in food products.
Current FDA rules allow nutrition labels to list saturated and trans fats as zero, so long as the product contains less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving. However, the AMA claims that this is misleading to consumers, who could potentially consume more than a quarter of the American Heart Association’s recommended limit of two grams of trans fat per day in a single serving, unaware that the product contains trans fats.
The AMA’s position that consumers are being misled by current FDA rules does have some support in the marketplace. In a consumer survey conducted by market researchers Greenfield Online, 72 percent of U.S. respondents said they read nutrition labels and fact panels in an effort to make healthy purchasing decisions when shopping, and 61 percent said they considered zero grams of trans fat per serving to be the most important heart health related claim for a product.