FDA Announces Final Guidance on Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels

Last Friday (November 2, 2018), FDA announced the availability of its final guidance, "Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels: Questions and Answers Related to the Compliance Date, Added Sugars, and Declaration of Quantitative Amounts of Vitamins and Minerals: Guidance for Industry."

The guidance is in the form of a Q&A that presents FDA's position on the compliance dates and various technical issues related to calculating and rounding nutrients for declaration in the Nutrition Facts Label (NFL) and Supplement Facts Label (SFL). The bulk of the guidance (approximately 17 of 29 pages) conveys FDA's position on what constitutes added sugars and how to calculate added sugars in certain scenarios. With respect to calculating added sugars, the final guidance appears to provide flexibility for some of the technical issues that may arise in manufacturing and processing. This alert highlights some of the clarifications FDA provided regarding added sugars.