d3sign/Getty Images
Your "healthy" yogurt may be getting a rebrand soon.
On Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration published its new and improved definition of what constitutes a "healthy" food, tightening up the limits on added sugars, salt, and saturated fat in foods that carry the label.
In a meticulous 318-page document, the federal agency details strict parameters for companies that wish to call their foods "healthy."
For example, a fruit-based food can't be "healthy" anymore if one serving has more than 2% of a person's recommended daily value of sugar. The same goes for veggies, meat, and eggs, while grains can have up to 10% DV of added sugars.
This could change how some brands currently market their food products as a healthy snack alternative.
The last time the FDA issued an update on theΒ "healthy" label was three decades ago, according to the agency.
Under the new standards, the agency said foods such asΒ "water, avocados, nuts and seeds, higher fat fish, such as salmon and olive oil will now qualify to use theΒ 'healthy' claim."
The new guidance comes as competition in the heath food aisle intensifies β the global health and wellness food market was valued at roughly $878 billion last year, according to a 2024 market data study from Data Bridge.
The FDA's report estimates that the changes could make a dent in chronic diseases nationally, saving about $686 million over 20 years.
The cost to manufacturers, meanwhile, comes in at $403 million over 20 years for "reformulating, labeling, and recordkeeping," per the report.
The rule won't change food labeling overnight: it's not slated to take effect until 2028, and it's an optional one β food labels don't have to mention they're "healthy."
But it comes just as President-elect Trump prepares to take office. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who Trump has tapped to lead the US Departmet of Health and Human Services, the umbrella federal health agency that oversees FDA, has recently proclaimed he's waging war against big food companies, vowing to "Make America Healthy Again" and take chemical dyes out of our Fruit Loops. (In case you were wondering: Fruit Loops, with 24% of a person's recommended daily dose of added sugars per serving, do not make the new "healthy" claim cut.)
"If the incoming administration is truly serious about making Americans eat healthier, then they should embrace the power of food labeling," former FDA official Peter Lurie, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told The New York Times.
Although heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, a significant portion of people who experience heart attacks are unaware that they have the underlying condition. Cleerly, a cardiovascular imaging startup, hopes to fix this. By analyzing CT scans of the heart, the companyβs AI software aims to identify early-stage coronary [β¦]
Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
On May 7, 2011, Georgia resident Tonya Brand noticed a pain on the inside of her right thigh. As the pain grew worse in the 4- to 5-inch area of her leg, she headed to a hospital. There, doctors suspected she had a blood clot. But an ultrasound the next day failed to find one. Instead, it revealed a mysterious toothpick-sized object lodged in Brand's leg.
Over the next few weeks, the painful area became a bulge, and on June 17, Brand put pressure on it. Unexpectedly, the protrusion popped, and a 1.5-inch metal wire came poking out of her leg, piercing her skin.
The piece of metal was later determined to be part of a metal filter she had implanted in a vein in her abdomen more than two years earlier, in March 2009, according to a lawsuit Brand filed. The filter was initially placed in her inferior vena cava (IVC), the body's largest vein tasked with bringing deoxygenated blood from the lower body back up to the heart. The filter is intended to catch blood clots, preventing them from getting into the lungs, where they could cause a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Brand got the IVC filter ahead of a spinal surgery she had in 2009, which could boost her risk of clots.
Β© Cook Medical
