The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced last week that nutrition labels will become mandatory on 40 popular fresh meat and poultry products starting on January 1, 2012. While packages of processed meaty items like bacon, hot dogs and cold cuts have worn a nutrition facts panel since 1994 in accordance with the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA), most unprocessed foods have remained unlabeled (voluntary labeling guidelines have remained largely unheeded since 1993). As suppliers and retailers prepare to comply with the new mandate as the deadline approaches this year, consumers should start noticing numbers on their steaks, chicken breasts, chops and more.
Nutrition labeling is meant to inform people and help them comply with the government's Dietary Guidelines (USDA and Department of Health and Human Services) which advise limiting fat & saturated fat intake. In theory, the average American will read & understand the Nutrition Facts panel then act in a prudent manner. Over the past 16 years, people have become fatter and sicker despite having calorie and fat information for processed foods at their finger tips. What makes the public health officials think that placing nutrition labels on meat will make much difference to consumers?
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at NYU and author of such popular books as Food Politics and What to Eat, says that the new mandate "will be very helpful to people who are bewildered by what's in meat." She thinks that "people will be shocked at the calories and fat." While I am a fan of Nestle and applaud her efforts to reveal the influence that politics and the food industry have on nutrition and health policies, I personally disagree with her optimism. Sure, the label-reading public will continue to read labels. This particular segment of the population already avoids the fattiest of meats so the new law will have little, if any, effect on their shopping behavior. Folks who usually ignore the fine print may notice the new labels. But I have my doubts about whether they will actually change their purchasing habits based on the numbers that are soon to be in clear view.
Case in point: People still purchase DiGiorno frozen pepperoni pizza even though the nutrition facts panel declares that a single 8" pie contains 33 grams of fat, of which 15 grams are saturated, and 900 calories. In order to determine the total quantity of fat and calories in the box the consumer must make a simple calculation. 11 grams of fat per serving X 3 servings. One serving is just 1/3 of a pizza. At first glance, the label makes it seem that a single pizza contains just 17% of the recommended daily value of fat when, in fact, it contains about a half. Eating an entire frozen pie is not out of the question for Americans accustomed to the inflated portions they are served in restaurants these days. Solving a mathematical equation is another story...
Many of the standard serving sizes used on food labels were determined in the 1990s by surveys taken in the previous two decades. It is a well-known fact that people tend to underestimate how much they eat. Given the increase in appetites since the '70s, the F.D.A. needs to seriously re-evaluate serving sizes. However, doing so introduces debate about the message that larger serving sizes would send to an overweight population.
For the time being, 4 ounces will be the serving size used for the purpose of labeling the nutritional content of meat. That's a quarter pound. The McDonald's "Quarter Pounder" was invented in 1971 by a franchise owner who "felt there was a void in our menu vis-a-vis the adult who wanted a higher ratio of meat to bun." The new menu item was an immediate success and introduced nation-wide. Unfortunately, the quarter pound (raw weight) burger is no longer an extravagant novelty. Half pounders, or two quarter pound patties sandwiched together, are easy to come by in pubs and fast casual restaurants.
For those who enjoy a high "meat to bun" ratio, the nutrition facts for a single serving of ground beef will drastically underestimate the calories and fat they are accustomed to eating in a single sitting. To make matters worse, the FSIS has decided that printing "the number of servings per container is not necessary information on the nutrition labels or point-of-purchase materials of the major cuts or non-major cuts of single-ingredient, raw products because these products are typically random weight products." In other words, since the weight of raw meat packaged at the retail level varies from package to package, the government doesn't think the number of servings per package needs to be mentioned.
Another silly decision is the requirement that any statement of lean percentage on the package of ground or chopped meat be accompanied by the percent fat. Listing both is redundant because the two numbers simply add up to 100%. This resolution was meant to appease concerns that listing just the percentage of lean meat on products that do not meet regulatory for "low fat" (no more than 3 grams fat per serving) would lead the consumer to believe the product is low in fat. Since lean percentages have become an industry norm, it would have made no sense to replace then with the fat percentage. So the logical thing (in fed's mind) to do is to list both percentages side by side.
This ruling does nothing to educate the consumer about a percentage of great nutritional importance: the fraction of calories that comes from the product's fat content. Ground sirloin, the "lightest" option, is in the range of 90-95% lean yet derives about 45-52% of calories from fat (each gram of fat contains 9 calories compared to 4 calories per gram of protein). The only way to figure this out from the nutrition facts panel is to read the fine print and do the math yourself (calories from fat divided by total calories).
The last, but not the least, shortcoming of putting nutrition on packages of fresh, unprocessed meat is the inherent inaccuracy of labeling an agricultural product with natural variability. The values used will come from the USDA's Nutrient Data Bank. As long as no health claims are made on the product label or at the point of purchase, the FSIS will not sample or conduct nutrient analysis of any retail specimens. So, there is no way to know if the local butcher inadvertently mixed up a batch of ground round (85% - 89% lean) and ground chuck (78% - 84% lean). You'd hope that he'd be able to visually identify and differentiate batches but who's monitoring? Slap on a label and you're good to go!
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