Nutrition label change could pose health and sales challenge

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is contemplating a change to the way it calculates the percent daily value (DV) on food and supplement labels, and natural products industry experts say that the modification could cause consumer confusion at best and malnutrition at worst.  

In 2007, the FDA issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled “Food Labeling: Revision of Reference Values and Mandatory Nutrients.” In that document, the FDA requested feedback on ways to revise the DVs that appear on Nutrition Facts and Supplement Facts panels. DVs indicate the percentage of a nutrient in a serving of food based on recommended daily intakes for a 2,000-calorie diet.

“The way [DVs] have been computed has not changed for a number of years,” says Steve Mister, president and CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Council for Responsible Nutrition. “In fact, the data on which some of those DVs are based goes back to the late 1960s.”

The FDA is currently reviewing comments on the advance notice, according to Stephen King, FDA spokesman. "If FDA were to decide to revise the [DVs], then FDA would issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and solicit comments again on proposed changes and then issue a Final Rule at a later date," King says. Mister predicts that after four years of consideration, the FDA could finally release a proposed rule on this issue before the end of the year.

On one hand, Mister applauds the move, saying that DVs are in desperate need of an update. For example, the Institute of Medicine recently upped its recommended intakes for vitamin D. Yet DVs on product labels don’t yet reflect the newly recommended levels.

On the other hand, the FDA isn’t intending only to fix outdated DV percentages so that they're based on recent science. The agency also is mulling over a revision to the methodology by which it computes DVs. Currently, DVs are calculated using the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA)—the number at which 95 percent of the population hits sufficiency for a nutrient. Instead, the FDA might use the estimated average requirement (EAR)—the level at which half the population hits sufficiency for a nutrient. As a result of this change, DVs would go up. For example, a product that now indicates it contains 100% DV of vitamin C might soon say 150% DV—and nothing other than the label will have changed in the food or supplement.

“It makes less nutritious food look more nutritious,” Mister says. “And it makes supplements look like they’re super potent, which might actually deter people from taking them if [products] are at 200 percent and 300 percent daily value.”