Deregulation: A Summary of Legislation
Once upon a time, foods could NOT claim to improve health. Back then, dietary supplements had to choose whether they wanted to be regulated like a food or like a drug. As a drug, they could claim to improve your health - but they had to prove it with expensive clinical trials. Naturally, industry wanted the ability to make health claims without the requirement of scientifically proving themselves. Here are some key steps as they got their wish.

• The Proxmire Amendment (1976) - forbid the FDA from limiting the amounts of vitamins and minerals in supplements, setting standards of identity, classifying supplements as drugs, or requiring that supplements only contain useful ingredients.
• Reagan appointees in the Department of Health and Human Services overruled the FDA's objection to Kellogg's claim that All-Bran cereal reduces risk of cancer. (1984)
• The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (1990) - forced the FDA to allow health claims for foods and supplements. The rules were lax enough to allow for cheese labels to that said "low in fat" and jelly beans that claimed to be "healthy" because they were low in fat and salt.
• The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (1994) - required manufacturers of new supplements to send the FDA some evidence that the product has a use or benefit just 75 days before putting it on the market and allowed "statements of nutritional support" on supplement labels ("structure/function" statements). To use these statements, a company must give the FDA a heads up within 30 days of marketing their products, have some kind of evidence to back up their claim, and include a disclaimer on the product's label that says "This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease."
• The FDA Modernization Act (1997) - required the FDA to allow nutrient content and health claims for foods so long as their claims were backed up by an authoritative statement currently in effect published by a U.S. goverment scientific body or the National Academy of Sciences. The FDA has only 120 days in which they can deal with a petition for a health claim; after that, the claim was authorized by default.
• Pearson v. Shalala (1999) - ruled that lack of support for "significant scientific  agreement" was NOT a reason the FDA could use to deny a health claim as it infringed on freedom of speech.
• The FDA issues final rules for structure/function statements (2000) - in addition to previous gains, industry got one more concession: supplement makers could now claim that products helped for "common conditions associated with natural states or processes that do not cause significant or permanent harm." In other words, supplements could claim to help memory loss, hot flashes, morning sickness, and more.
  

As consumers, who among us hasn't responded to health claims in the last few decades? Whether you went for Total cereal, high omega-3 eggs, or granola made with hemp and flax, you've been suckered in. These foods aren't necessarily bad, of course, but their ability to lure you in show the power of health claims on food labels.

What about a chocolate bar called Health by Chocolate though? A small candy bar sold at Whole Foods for a steep price, this product instructs consumers to use it as a vitamin. Obviously the difference between such a product and your average bottle of vitamins (besides price!) are the few hundred calories and several grams of fat the chocolate bar gives you in addition. Why should you eat a chocolate bar as a vitamin in the first place? If you want vitamins, you can pop a pill without the fat and calories. If you want chocolate, why not go for the most luscious, rich chocolate you can find instead of rating chocolates by their nutrient profiles?

Two last things to note here. First, it is true that people who take supplements are healthier, but that is because that is a self-selected group. They are all relatively wealthy, well educated, and interested in their health. Therefore, one the whole, they eat pretty well and they exercise.

Second, it's often hard to do a scientific study about the effects of an individual nutrient because people eat complex diets and there are always a zillion things affecting our health, so singling out one nutrient isn't always straightforward.

What Should We Do About This?
As alluded to before, there are several legitimate reasons to allow for health claims, even if one is overall not in favor of their use in marketing foods and supplements, especially when they are held to such low scientific standards. These include:

• Just because a health claim hasn't been verified by scientific evidence doesn't mean it's not true.
• If someone wants to take a ridiculous amount of vitamins, unless it's sold in a dangerous amount, why should the government interfere?
• Even if supplements are only good for their placebo effects, who cares? At least they are accomplishing what their buyers want them to do.

When it comes to supplements alone, the dangers are that someone might put off or avoid going to a medical doctor while trying to treat a serious condition with supplements, a supplement may be legalized even though it causes harm, and false claims are downright fraudulent and represent a crime by taking people's money in exchange for false promises.

Regulation of health claims in foods can be more harmful than claims in dietary supplements alone because they can encourage people to eat more of the wrong kinds of foods while justifying them for their health claims. Imagine someone who starts their day with vitamin fortified sugary cereal (that may promise them whole grains and fiber... despite only containing 1g of fiber), has a snack of Health by Chocolate, follows that with a lunch of high omega-3 super-sugary and fatty hemp granola and probiotic sugary "creme brulee" flavored yogurt, and so on. Should it be legal to lead this person to believe that his or her sugary snacks are all health foods?

We at Recipe for America would like to see standards established for foods that wish to add health claims to their labels. For example, we could forbid foods that are high in fat, high in sodium, low in fiber, or high in added sugars from adding health claims to their labels. By addressing added sugars as well as fat and sodium, we would avoid creating a "jellybean loophole" like the one mentioned above. Furthermore, we should set a strict enough standard to judge which foods qualify as "low in fat" or "low in sodium," etc.  Odds are that Kraft cheese should not show up on the "low in fat" list of foods.

Also, we'd like to ensure the FDA receives adequate funding to carry out its regulatory duties so that those violating even the current lax regulations are held accountable.

However - the first step towards that is getting rid of political appointees and legislators who are in the pockets of industry AND making sure our government knows that we consumers care about the integrity of the health claims on our foods.