The Food and Drug Administration wants to update its rules for which foods can be branded “healthy.”
The proposed label rule aims, in part, to address a question as old as medicine: What does it mean for a food to be healthy? It would update the “healthy” label guidelines from 1994 to match up-to-date nutrition research — a notoriously messy and heavily debated field. Now, food makers can call their products “healthy” if they keep sodium, sugar, and other content below certain levels, and if they contain a “meaningful” amount of food from at least one of the food groups like fruits, vegetables, or dairy.