The FDA Eyes Clearer Nutrition Info

The FDA last overhauled its Nutrition Facts label in 2016. Now, a decade later, new food and beverage label changes are expected to roll out.

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What’s on your label? It may be changing soon.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is going after some of the world’s most valuable real estate — the front of food and beverage (F&B) packaging — by eyeing new labels that would generate additional costs and potentially lead to other packaging and ingredient changes, impacting some sales positively and others negatively.

The agency argues that nutrition labels contain valuable information, which is often lost to consumers because it is hidden or at least not immediately apparent. By creating a new, simple nutrition label that goes on the front-of-package (FOP), they believe they can make nutrition information more prominent.

The FDA is also considering defining “ultra-processed foods” in ways that could lead to mandated changes on some F&B labeling. The agency recently redefined “healthy” foods and beverages that voluntarily make such claims.

Many of these claims have already led to litigation and serious damages. Now, more changes could open the door to a new wave of lawsuits.

The idea behind these changes is that health information should be a larger factor in consumer decision-making. The FDA aims to encourage the F&B industry to provide more information in simpler, easily understandable forms that consumers can readily use.

As part of a global movement to boost health by helping consumers evaluate foods, the FDA says the new FOP label would provide “consumers a simple aid to provide additional context for making informed food selections.” The comment period for that proposal ended on July 15, 2025.

The FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are also seeking to craft a national definition of “ultra-processed foods” that could “reshape food labeling and marketing practices across the United States,” according to a Foster Garvey PC legal alert.

Comments were due for that by September 23, 2025, even as several states propose their own definitions based on varying criteria.

Accounting for Change

While clearer information could facilitate healthier decisions, labels are expensive, and altering them will add costs; however, for accounting measures can help defray some of that.

Think about thousands of products and the costs associated with placing new labels to conform to new regulations, consumer demands, and trends. Then, of course, there’s the potential impact on sales, as well as the ways retailers promote and market their products.

This relabeling of the food stream could also spur more rebranding or better marketing as companies revisit and revise labels. But in addition to label costs, this could bring additional opportunities to manage costs, including tax benefits.

In “design-by-design capitalization,” companies can amortize packaging and labeling costs over 60 months, while using “pool-of-cost capitalization” allows amortization over 48 months. There are, however, various approaches with various benefits.

When next year’s labels and packaging are in use, capitalized costs of the prior year’s design can be fully written off after abandoning or modifying the old package design.

This can lead to accelerated deductions and nearly immediate tax benefits, since costs can be expensed in the current year rather than being amortized over four or more years.

Accounting, though, is only one of the elements that go into managing the changes to labels, including FOP, which essentially represents the face of so many foods and beverages. New labeling and definitions could be new fronts on the F&B battlelines for marketing and sales.

The new regulation, while focused on consumers, doesn’t take into account the millions of dollars spent on label design, as F&B companies feel the pain of trying to balance consumer demands and interests with the costs of new packaging and labeling.

The Fear Factor

The FDA hopes that health will become a bigger factor in sales and consumer choices, which could benefit healthier foods, at least based on the new labeling, if the agency is right.

According to the FDA, the goal is to “empower consumers to build nutritious diets that support health and wellness,” though it has yet to decide whether it will impose these new FOP requirements.

The agency sees Americans facing an “ever-growing epidemic of preventable diet-related chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.” The FDA wants consumers to eat healthier, based on its guidelines.

“Improving nutrition offers one of the greatest opportunities for reducing these and other chronic illnesses and premature death,” according to the agency. “The FDA helps to support nutritious eating patterns in part by providing information so that consumers can identify healthier food choices.”

The “processed foods” definition could lead to both labeling changes and even warnings, according to Foster Garvey.

“If the definition results in a warning or front-of-package labels or SNAP restrictions, companies may need to reformulate recipes, source new ingredients, or rethink marketing strategies,” according to Foster Garvey.

Thinking Inside the Box

While others talk about thinking outside the box, the FDA wants consumers to use the box. The new front-of-package nutrition label, which the FDA refers to as a “nutrition info box,” would be in addition to the “nutrition facts label” required on most food packages. This would be a significant leap forward in transparency, with information front and center.

This would mean “displaying simplified, at-a-glance, nutrition information” concerning saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content of a food as “Low,” “Med,” or “High.”

The agency says current federal dietary recommendations advise U.S. consumers “to limit these three nutrients to achieve a nutrient-dense diet within calorie limits.”

While calories would not be included in the nutrition info box, manufacturers could indicate calories on the front of the food package if they choose.

Comparison Shopping

This small, black-and-white box could help consumers “compare similar foods and identify foods that have healthier nutrient profiles,” according to the FDA.

When comparing yogurt, for instance, the nutrition information box can help identify a yogurt that is lower in added sugars.

“Use of FOP nutrition labeling has increased dramatically around the world in recent years,” according to the FDA. “FOP nutrition labeling in the U.S. has the potential to be a landmark policy and as iconic as the Nutrition Facts label.”

Achieving transparency has been a major question for the F&B industry. New labels are just one part of that. The agency last overhauled its Nutrition Facts label in 2016. Roughly a decade later, this would be another major change, expected to take several years to roll out, if the rules are finalized.

In 2023, the agency conducted a study involving nearly 10,000 U.S. adults to evaluate consumer responses to eight approaches for FOP labels on cereal, frozen meals, and canned soups.

The experimental study, the FDA says, showed black and white nutrition info boxes with the percent daily value “performed best in helping consumers identify healthier food options.”

Healthy Redefined

While other mandatory labeling actions are being implemented, the FDA has also recently redefined voluntary “healthy” nutrient claims, which will impact some labeling.

Before, foods with high sugar content, for example, could claim they were “healthy,” but now, following a new labeling rule in effect, foods must not only meet the standards set by FDA guidelines for health, but also meet limits for added sugars, saturated fat, and sodium.

“The new rule aims to ensure that ‘healthy’ foods are truly aligned with a nutritious eating style, not just low in one particular nutrient,” according to the Center for Food as Medicine and Longevity.

The Center said vegetables, fruits, beans, lean meats, and fat-free yogurt “automatically qualify.” But many snacks or “mixed foods” must have enough whole grains, produce, or other healthy ingredients and “keep sugar, salt, and saturated fat low.”

A whole-grain cereal, for instance, could be “healthy” only if its sugar and sodium are low, as the FDA takes a more holistic look at “healthy” food claims.

As the agency looks at ways to modify consumer behavior, there is a real chance that this could be part of a F&B information revolution. Still, there is no certainty that consumers will absorb or use the data.

Simpler labels could lead to healthier decisions, with F&B winners and losers, but consumers could still ignore the information. After all, you can lead a horse or at least a human being to bottled water, but not necessarily make them react to the label.