nutrition labels

[darkoshi]

Starting in the last 4 years or so, the requirements for food nutrition labels in the U.S. have changed:
4 Major Changes Are Coming To Food Nutrition Labels (May 2016)
Changes to the Nutrition Facts Label: What Parents Need to Know (April 2020)

The Nutrition Facts Label: Its History, Purpose and Updates (March 2020)

There are four vitamins and minerals that are required to be listed on every updated Nutrition Facts label: vitamin D, calcium, iron and potassium. While calcium and iron were also required before the latest update, vitamin D and potassium are new to the list, replacing vitamins A and C. The swap was made because Americans get enough vitamin A and C in their diet but fall short on vitamin D and potassium.

So Vitamin A and C are usually no longer listed, which I did not realize. But what about all the other vitamins and minerals? I seem to recall that labels used to list many other vitamins and minerals too, didn't they? Now they hardly ever do.

There have been multiple times over the last few years where I've looked at the nutrition label on some product that I'd expect to be healthy, such as vegetables or fruit, and have thought to myself, "According to this it has basically no vitamins or minerals at all, so it must not be that healthy after all. Fruit and vegetables are overrated."

I wonder if other people have had that reaction too.


Update, 2021/01/23: I didn't think to mention it before, but it was a false expectation of mine which caused that reaction. I expected that if a product had a measurable amount of certain vitamins or minerals, that those amounts would normally be listed on the label. I thought they would only be omitted when they weren't present at more than trace levels.

Comments

[conuly]

Peanuts are pretty healthy if you're not allergic to them and not on a very low-cal or low-carb diet.

For stuff like that, have you ever looked at https://nutritiondata.self.com/ ?

Frozen peas: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2525/2

Scroll down past the stuff that still requires Flash (!?), and then you get a neat little nutrition label. One cup of frozen peas - which is a lot of frozen peas - contains a significant percentage of your RDA of vitamins A, C, and K, and quite a lot of thiamin and folate. It also has 25% of your daily RDA of fiber.

[darkoshi]

That's good to see about the peas. And corn too. Sometimes I look up info on sites like if I'm curious about something in particular, but not in general.

I've always been taught that fruit and vegetables are healthy, but I guess these new labels really have been taking their toll on me. That's my point here - that if you go by the new labels, they make it seem like healthy food isn't so great at all.

I vaguely recall looking at one of those tubs of greens in the vegetable section and thinking to myself, no vitamins? Why should I pay that price for this when it hardly has any vitamins or minerals anyway? And I'm vegan! If the labels have affected me that much, how much worse might they be for other people?

[conuly]

It's weird, I was always taught that if it had to tell you what vitamins and minerals it contained, it probably wasn't very healthful at all.

[conuly]

But my family always did a lot of buying from the edges - lots of time in the produce section, hardly any time anywhere else.