On November 6, 2023, FDA hosted a virtual public meeting on strategies to reduce added sugar consumption in the U.S., fulfilling FDA’s mandate under the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health to “assess[] the evidence base” for, and hold a public meeting regarding, “future steps the federal government could take to reduce intake of added sugars.” In the meeting, presenters from academia and state and local governments discussed a range of potential added sugar reduction measures, including taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, voluntary sugar reduction targets, and public education and counter-marketing campaigns. While FDA did not explicitly endorse any of these initiatives, the purpose of the meeting and the platform given to discussion of these efforts may signal the possibility of similar measures being adopted at the federal level.
Virtual Public Meeting Summary
The meeting consisted of four presentations and three panels. It began with a presentation on FDA's recent efforts to reduce added sugar consumption, including the mandatory declaration of added sugars in the Nutrition Facts label, the New Nutrition Facts Label: What's in It for You? education campaign, and the Interactive Nutrition Facts Label resource. The CDC then provided an overview of national and state data on added sugar intake among children and adults. The CDC said that added sugar intake currently exceeds national recommendations and identified sweetened beverages as the top source of added sugars among U.S. children, adolescents, and adults.
In a presentation on global sugar reduction policies, Dr. Shu Wen Ng, a professor of public health nutrition at the University of North Carolina, summarized initiatives to tax sugar-sweetened beverages and ultra-processed foods, mandate front-of-package labeling, and restrict marketing/advertising of products high in added sugar. Dr. Ng argued that these efforts can be effective in lowering added sugar intake.
The Director of Strategic Nutrition Initiatives at the New York City Department of Health discussed the National Salt and Sugar Reduction Initiative's (“NSSRI”) efforts to reduce sugar consumption in New York City by developing voluntary sugar reduction targets. To develop such targets, NSSRI built a packaged food and beverage database that combined Nielsen sales data and Label Insight nutrition data to identify 15 categories of products with added sugars. NSSRI finalized these categories in collaboration with industry and released the voluntary targets in February 2021. NSSRI will assess progress at the end of this year and in 2026, with the goal of reducing the mean sugar density of foods by 20 percent at the time of each assessment.
The meeting concluded with three panel discussions. The first panel offered government perspectives from FDA, CDC, NIH, HHS, and USDA on current strategies for reducing added sugars. FDA summarized its ongoing work to research and propose a standardized front-of-package labeling system for packaged food. The Reagan-Udall Foundation will host a public meeting on front-of-package labeling on November 16, 2023. The agency also noted its development of draft guidance on nutrient content claims for added sugar, which remains a priority item for the FDA Foods Program. FDA is continuing to gather responses to its Request for Information on Food Labeling in Online Grocery Shopping and will use these responses to improve consumer access to consistent and accurate nutrition information online. Finally, the agency noted its continuing review of various citizen petitions related to added sugar labeling.
In the second panel, representatives from the food industry discussed industry approaches to added sugar reduction. Such approaches include innovating and marketing low-sugar products, publicly committing to improve the nutritional quality of product portfolios, and partnering with retailers to strategically market low-sugar products.
The final panel explored strategies for reducing added sugar in communities. Panelists from CDC and USDA discussed the Rethink Your Drink and Be Sugar Smart education campaigns, the TEAM nutrition initiative, and efforts to reduce added sugar in child nutrition programs. Representatives from the Hawaii and Alaska Departments of Health then discussed state-level efforts to reduce the consumption of sweetened drinks, highlighting the purported success of certain aggressive counter-marketing campaigns.
Covington will continue to monitor federal, state, and local efforts to reduce added sugars in the U.S. food supply.
If you have any questions concerning the material discussed in this client alert, please contact the members of our Food, Drug, and Device practice.
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