The label 'added sugars & # 39; on food can save many lives

MONDAY, April 15, 2019 (HealthDay News) – New Nutrition Facts Label Highlighting Added Amounts of Sugars in Food Could Prevent Nearly One Million Cases of Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes, New Study Finds .

The new label, first introduced by the US Food and Drug Administration in May 2016, adds a new line in the Total Carbohydrates category that details the amount of sugar added to sugars already contained in a food product.

If consumers had access to this new label, their food choices could prevent more than 350,000 cases of heart disease and nearly 600,000 cases of type 2 diabetes over the next two decades, researchers predicted using a computer model. .

This would save the United States $ 31 billion in health care costs, as well as $ 62 billion in productivity and other societal costs, said senior researcher Renata Micha. She is an Associate Professor of Research at the Faculty of Science and Nutrition Policy at Tufts University, Boston.

These effects could be even greater if the new nutrition label encouraged food manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar they added to products, Micha said.

"If this added sugar label encouraged the food industry to reformulate even a portion of its products to contain fewer added sugars, these health and financial benefits would be doubled, which would have an impact." bewildering, "said Micha.

Added sugars account for more than 15% of Americans' total daily calories, exceeding the recommended level of less than 10%, researchers said in briefing notes.

It can be difficult to recognize added sugars by looking at the list of ingredients on a label, says the US Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Brown sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, malt syrup, maltose, molasses, raw sugar and sucrose are just some of the many different ingredients which contribute to the addition of sugars in foods, notes the CDC.

To simplify things for consumers, the FDA has proposed a new line on the Nutrition Facts label that totals all these sources of added sugar. The line would indicate the number of grams of sugar added and the percentage that they contribute to the daily calories of an average person.