first lady michelle obama

First Lady Michelle Obama Proposes New Nutrition label to help America!

Whatever you have to say about President Obama, The one thing he unarguably did right; was marry Michelle Obama!

Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign promotes healthier living.

About:
Let’s Move! is a comprehensive initiative, launched by the First Lady, dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation, so that children born today will grow up healthier and able to pursue their dreams. Sure, this is an ambitious goal. But with your help, we can do it.

Combining comprehensive strategies with common sense, Let’s Move! is about putting children on the path to a healthy future during their earliest months and years. Giving parents helpful information and fostering environments that support healthy choices. Providing healthier foods in our schools. Ensuring that every family has access to healthy, affordable food. And, helping children become more physically active.

At the launch of the initiative, President Barack Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum creating the first-ever Task Force on Childhood Obesity to conduct a review of every single programs and policies relating to child nutrition and physical activity and develop a national action plan to maximize federal resources and set concrete benchmarks toward the First Lady’s national goal. The Task Force recommendations focus on the five pillars of the First Lady’s Let’s Move! initiative:

Creating a healthy start for children
Empowering parents and caregivers
Providing healthy food in schools
Improving access to healthy, affordable foods
Increasing physical activity
Everyone has a role to play in reducing childhood obesity, including parents and caregivers, elected officials from all levels of government, schools, health care professionals, faith-based and community-based organizations, and private sector companies. Your involvement is key to ensuring a healthy future for our children.

Michelle’s new mission is to make nutrition labels easier to read for Americans.

This morning, First Lady Michelle Obama, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg announced proposed changes to Nutrition Facts labels, the most notable of which include clearly listing the amount of added sugars and updating serving size requirements to be more in line with the amounts that people actually eat.

“Our guiding principle here is very simple: that you as a parent and a consumer should be able to walk into your local grocery store, pick up an item off the shelf, and be able to tell whether it’s good for your family,” the First Lady said in the announcement. “So this is a big deal, and it’s going to make a big difference for families all across this country.”

The changes are in line with the FLOTUS’ Let’s Move! initiative, but they’re also based around the latest scientific information about nutrition and its impact on conditions like obesity and heart disease. The recommendation to list added sugars, for example, comes as a result of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans’ determination that people in the U.S. are consuming too many calories from added sugars. Other proposed changes include:

Updated daily intake recommendations for nutrients like sodium, dietary fiber, and vitamin D
Mandatory listing of potassium and vitamin D content on nutrition labels (these were not required before but are now considered “nutrients of public health significance”). Listing calcium and iron content was required before and will still be required, while listing the content of vitamins A and C will now be optional (since research indicates the general population isn’t deficient in these nutrients).
Removal of the “Calories from Fat” item on nutritional labels. “Total Fat,” “Saturated Fat,” and “Trans Fat” declarations will still be required, but this change is being suggested because the latest research indicates that type of fat is more important than amount.
Changed serving size requirements to reflect what people actually eat (as noted above). This includes a requirement that packaged foods people usually consume in one sitting (like a bag of chips or a bottle of soda) be considered a single serving.
The addition of a “per package” column for nutrient information (this would appear alongside a “per serving” column) when foods come in large packages that might be consumed in one sitting (for example, a 24-ounce bottle of soda or a pint of ice cream).
A new design for the Nutrition Facts label that will make the most important information easier to see at a glance. Here’s a mockup of the new design:

These newly released details reveal what exactly the FDA proposed to the White House last month. If these suggested changes are accepted, they’ll be just the second time nutrition information labels have been significantly altered since 1993, when they first became mandatory. (In 2006, food manufacturers were required to list trans fat content.)

Of course, the changes won’t go into effect immediately—they’re just being proposed at this point. For the next step, the FDA is making them available for public comment for 90 days. In the meantime, this infographic gives some more info on the proposed serving size changes:

-womenshealthmag.com

Do I think this is a good idea? Yes! Do I agree with everything? No!

When do we as Americans say this is a realistic health size? Americans supersize everything! Is that healthy? No!

We started out eating a scoop of ice cream… Then went to 2 scoops because it looked cooler on a cone. Now we are eating the entire pint! Some fat asses are eating it by the half gallon and it’s also not acceptable to call them fat asses anymore! It will hurt their feelings and it’s bullying! But it’s ok to eat a whole half gallon or more of ice cream in a sitting? That’s what these labels are leading to!

Pick a size! 4oz or 6oz then the entire container and put both counts side by side!

As for the added sugar… That’s what I want! Milk for example has 12g of carbs 11g of sugar. Does it come out of the cow that way or is some asshole standing there with a bowl of sugar saying Americans won’t like straight milk from the cow!

Obviously sugar in milk is naturally occurring, but you get the point better with that example.

Bolder calorie counts… Does that make a difference? Why not make it red or green, yellow, red… Who’s to say what too much is? Which goes back to the serving size…

You can’t win with serving size!

I say who eats less than a whole can of Campbell’s soup? I’m 6′ 245lbs my mother was 5′ 4″ well; she did! To me 1/2 a can is preposterous!

My serving size of meat is 8-10oz hers would be 4-6oz

Do you understand what I am saying? Pick a size for a certain size such as treadmills. Treadmills usually start at 175lb male. The old ones started at 150lb male.

Look at my grandfather from Italy he was short and skinny! 5’5″ 150ish if that!

The point is that yes new labels are needed, but just as new labels are needed a healthy standard is needed!

I think the app fooducate is on the right path, but again they have no standard scoring.

Above is an example of a good food!

Above is an example of a bad product!

Notice the bad tips! That’s helpful! Let America decide what they want from there!

The real problem is this:
Only 60% of Americans read the label in the first place! what about the other 40?

Who reads nutrition labels?

More than half do, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. About 61.5 percent reported using the nutrition facts panel when deciding to purchase food. Fewer people paid attention to the list of ingredients (51.6 percent), the serving size (47.2 percent), and health claims (43.8 percent).

The findings from Columbia University reported that women with some college education were more likely to use the nutrition labels. Those who used them reported fewer calories, fat, saturated fat, and sugar intake than participants who did not pay attention.

Researchers used information from a 2005-2006 survey in which 5,502 participants answered questions on food label use and completed two 24-hour recalls of what they ate. The study also found that participants with limited English language skills had reduced rates of label use, indicating that language could be a barrier.

Read the abstract

“If food labels are to have greater influence on public health, rates of use will likely need to be increased among US adults,” wrote the study authors.

Some suggestions for changing nutrition labels have been to have calories in bold type to or to issue more intuitive labeling using colors like red, yellow and green on food labels.
-CNN.com

I’ll bet you in certain instances that number is much lower!

How many Americans ask to see the label at a bar? How many calories is in that Long Island iced tea or strawberry daiquiri? Yeah right!!

How many Americans actually look at the facts when going to Burger King and McDonald’s? I’ll tell you! The occasional shopper! Not the people that frequent those places! Do you think that Mama June and the Boo boo clan pay any attention what so ever to the nutrition labels! Yeah right c’mon get real!

That’s the problem!

For those of us that do read it, yes added sugar is a God send! Thank you for that! The other proposed changes need to be rethought out!

This is exactly what they are talking about! I found this today at stop and shop

The bottle on the left says lite! By who’s standard? Watch this!