Omri Ben-Shahar, Leo and Eileen Herzel Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics, appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight on May 23, 2016, to discuss the FDA's newly announced changes to food labels. 

With the backing of first lady Michelle Obama, the Food and Drug Administation announced Friday the first major changes to food nutrition labels since the early 1990s. But not everyone was on board: Some food makers and the sugar industry fought the revisions.

The updated labels will highlight “calories,” and “servings” and will be much bigger. The FDA has also tweaked the serving sizes to more closely reflect the amounts of food that people actually eat. That’s changed significantly since the serving size requirements were published in 1993. The most controversial aspect of the new labels is the declaration of grams and a percent daily value (%DV) for “added sugars” to help consumers know how much sugar has been added to the product.

“This is going to make a real difference in providing families across the country the information they need to make healthy choices,” Michelle Obama said in a statement.

So will the new information about sugar content, calorie counts and adjusted serving sizes help people with their diets and consumption or do most people ignore food labels?

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