TIME Article - Building a Better Label

By Adi Narayan
May 2, 2010

Food labels have gone awry in this country, say nutritionists and obesity researchers. Now the FDA aims to fix them.

At a Bravo supermarket on a recent weekday evening in Brooklyn, N.Y, shopper Jamilya Shroud-Garrett looks for a breakfast cereal for her son. She points to a box of Cheerios, which has a banner-style label bearing the message, "Can help lower cholesterol," and dismisses it as ridiculous. "It's common sense. If you have high cholesterol, it's not going to help to eat two bowls of cereal," she says. Shroud-Garrett is an unusually conscious brand of consumer, not easily swayed by so-called "front-of-pack" labeling — the carefully worded, attention-getting health and nutrition claims (Made with whole grains! All natural!), which appear on so many processed-food packages and which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now seeking to rein in. While Shroud-Garrett scanned the more detailed dietary information contained in the Nutrition Facts panel on the side of the box, most other shoppers who paused for an interview in the cereal aisle that evening said their choices were guided either by past purchases or front-of-the-box labels.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1986269_1986240_1986272-1,00.html