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New Labels To Improve Weight Loss, Experts Say

Last month, Somerville and Hoboken, N.J., doctors and dieticians came out in favor of the Food and Drug Administration’s proposed changes to food nutrition labels. According to a press release on the medical professionals’ stance, the new guidelines would make grocery-shopping decisions easier for medical weight-loss and bariatric patients. Food labels, the doctors and dieticians said, currently confuse consumers with marginal, fine-print nutrition information beside large-font health claims that are often misleading.

Among the professionals who joined in voicing their support for the recently suggested label reformatting were surgeons who perform gastric-bypass, gastric-sleeve and LAP-BAND procedures. They stated that many food packages announce aspects of products whose nutritional benefits are dubious at best. Specific examples of such misleading labels, as listed in the press release, include “gluten-free,” “low-fat,” “low-carbs” and “whole grains.”

“You’ll often see these plastered on boxes and bags and people think these terms mean the food they are buying is healthy when that may not be the case at all,” dietician Megan Butler, RD, said. “So turning that box or bag over and reading these new labels is important to make (sic) an informed decision.”

Though the FDA’s proposed changes won’t take effect for several years, they will change many aspects of how food packages must list nutrition information. Foremost of these changes is how non-resealable food packages will have to list the nutritional information of their contents as a single serving; no longer will the FDA allow such packaging, often used for potato chips, soda, cereals and snacks, to list the nutritional value for several smaller servings of the packages’ contents.

For more information on the FDA’s proposed label changes, or to learn about food products specifically made for dieters, visit DrGsWeightLoss.com.

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