Last month's release of study that revealed a discrepancy in nutritional content for a wide array of frozen food products and quick-service restaurant meals has the raised concern of Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY). In response, Hinchey has called upon the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct a thorough review of the ways it regulates and monitors nutritional labeling.
In a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, Hinchey laid out a series of questions over a recent study by the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at Tufts University. He pointed out that the study highlighted 20-year-old rules that often go unenforced, allowing companies and quick-service chains to exceed their stated nutritional content by as much as 20 percent. Furthermore, the rules do not require public disclosure of such variances. According to the study, some products exceeded their listed calorie content by as much as 200 percent.
"The American people have the right to know exactly what they are eating and what the true nutritional value is for packaged food products and fast food meals," said Hinchey, who is a member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, which oversees the FDA's budget. "In a society that is plagued by obesity, it's incumbent upon packaged food companies and fast food chain restaurants to end these misleading practices and accurately report nutritional information.
"The FDA needs to conduct a thorough review of its own policies and practices on this matter in order to protect public health. I'm hopeful that the FDA will act swiftly, but if not, I'm prepared to introduce legislation that would revamp the entire system and require accurate nutritional information to be labeled and posted."
From the letter:
Furthermore, although there is no excuse for violating federal nutritional labeling standards, I believe that the FDA's allowable margin of error may be too high and is not providing an incentive for food after analyzing vendor stated nutritional data as opposed to actual amounts manufacturers to determine and report accurate information. Beyond that, these regulations are almost 20 years old and given the advances made in food science during that time it seems reasonable to believe that the technology and techniques used to determine nutritional content in food have improved considerably.
