Food Industry: Telling the Truth About Food Ingredients Helps the Consumer, the Economy and the Environment - by Ellen Moyer, Ph.D.

Food ingredient labeling makes headline news these days. On January 22, 2013, ABC News reported that an estimated seven percent of the United States food supply contains fraudulent ingredients.

These are unlabeled ingredients that are used as cheap substitutes -- for example, industrial dyes masquerading as paprika. Proposition 37, the California ballot measure that would have required labeling of genetically modified (GM) foods, was narrowly defeated in the November 2012 elections; however, the battle rages on.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve GM salmon soon after a 60-day public comment period ends on February 25, 2013. Under current rules, labeling of GM salmon would not be required. Recent polls indicate that over 90 percent of Americans think GM foods should be labeled. As of December 18, 2012, over one million people had asked the FDA to label GM foods.

The stakes are high, because food labels cause problems for food companies. For example, on January 30, 2013, Network news reported on a lawsuit against a food manufacturer for using partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (a trans fat) in frozen pizza, a fact that is disclosed on the pizza box.

Negative health effects have caused many countries to ban or limit the use of artificial trans fats, including Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and the Republic of South Africa. California and 13 cities and towns in the United States also restrict the use of trans fats in settings such as restaurants and schools.

"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants," United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously wrote in 1913. It is time to shed more light on the substances we consume, not only by labeling GM foods and verifying food ingredients, but also by disclosing much more. Even if risks of some unlabeled ingredients are unclear, consumers should be allowed to make informed choices about what they eat. 

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