Blogging on Politics- FDA Changing Food Labels

Summary:
        On Thursday February 27, 2014 the First Lady Michelle Obama spoke about changing food labels to help fight America’s obesity. Some ideas of how the FDA would change the labels would be by having the calories be bolded, adding added sugar amounts and putting realistic serving sizes. The public has 90 days to comment and express how they feel about this change. Then after that, the change will be in effect. The goal of this change is to make people aware of what their eating and how much. "Obesity, heart disease and other chronic diseases are leading public health problems," says Michael Landa, director of FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. The new label is suppose to help people find what they need to make better food choices.  By having this change it also makes Food Companies make healthier foods. The change is making companies be more honest about whats in their food, so if they still want customers to buy their product they need to make the food healthy for them to eat and want to buy it.  
                                               Before:

                                                 After:

Analysis: 
     There are two sides to this new proposal and this is where politics come in. The conservative side believes that people should be able to make their own choices and they don't think the government should have to explain the serving size and all the extra changes. The democratic side feels that as a government we have a social responsibility to the citizens. People can make their own choices on what foods to eat but they would just be able to make better choices if food companies were more honest about their product their selling.  


Interpretation of the implications: 
      What this new food label will do for the consumers is help them make better food choices to be healthier. This is not forcing them to buy things because of the new label it just is there so if people want to and should make better food choices, this new label is perfect for helping people do that.  On the other hand food companies might start making smaller packages to compensate for having to change their portion sizes. Beyond people making better choices, is people having better overall health as a result. Many of the illness Americans face are due to our over indulgence in food, like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Better health makes us need less health care. Another obvious consequence of this change is that companies that make snack and baked foods and junk food might feel pressured to make their food healthier once they see how bad the nutrition content looks on the new label.  So this could be a good or bad thing. In a way it is punishing those type of companies even though there is nothing wrong with having those foods sometimes. It might encourage these companies (Like Sara Lee, Entemann's, or even Tostitos or Lays) to either make all their products healthier or produce some of the indulgent ones, but make and sell more of their healthier products. As a country we need the food industry to get on board with the way people are trying to eat today. After all they are partially responsible for American obesity. They made their unhealthy products, advertised them to kids that they were "cool" things to eat and then the kids put the pressure on the parents to buy them!