Document Type
Article
Publication
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
Year
2024
Citation Information
Alexia Brunet Marks, Defining "Healthy" on Food Labels: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, 31 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 47 (2024), available at https://scholar.law.colorado.edu/faculty-articles/1657.
Abstract
Few definitions of the mid-twentieth century have survived into the twenty-first century. It is worth asking, then, why the definition of "health," articulated seventy-five years ago by the World Health Organization, has endured into the present. The 1948 definition reads as follows: "[h]ealth is a state of complete physical, mental[,] and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." Aspirational in tone, the definition resonates with the surge among consumers towards healthier foods and overall well-being. However, in addition to wartime and pandemic concerns, today's threats to achieving "health" include climate change and a rise in diet-related chronic health diseases-like "obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, some cancers, and perhaps some neurological diseases."
Modernizing food labels can help reduce the incidence of diet-related chronic health disease. In the United States, the last major overhaul of food labeling standards occurred in 1990, with the adoption of a mandatory standardized Nutrition Facts Panel on all food products; since then, labels have become cluttered with symbols, pictures and words that prevent consumers from making informed, healthy food purchases. Consumers struggle to differentiate truth from advertising on food labels and find claims like "healthy," "nutritious," and "natural" fraudulent and misleading. Many other countries are adopting front-of package (FOP) nutritional labeling to curb diet-related chronic health disease; early results from Chile show that this approach is working. Meanwhile in the United States, where FOP labeling legislation has historically failed, the focus is on updating the definition for the nutrient content claim "healthy."
The problem is that, on the road to achieving legal accuracy to define the term "healthy," regulators may miss the larger goal of encouraging healthier outcomes. Can the new definition for the term "healthy" on food packages achieve both goals: to improve accuracy and to improve consumer health? This Article presents the tension that regulators face as they define the term "healthy," drawing from global FOP practices, industry and scientific perspectives, and current litigation in the United States, and recommends ways to strengthen the new "healthy" definition.
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