Solution Statement
Nutrition labeling plays an important role in promoting healthy living among individuals in the society. The nutrition labels provide in-depth and essential information about eating including serving size, the amount of serving in the package, the number of calories present in the serving, and nutrients available in the serving. This information is important, and it aids an individual to make healthy consumption decision that reduces health complications and increase life expectancy (Shapiro, 2015). Nutrition labels help individuals to determine the most nutritious food that does not increase the level of health complications in the body. For example, it provides information about the nutrient contents in the food such as the sugar level, cholesterol level, and the calories. This helps the consumer to avoid foods that may contain ingredients that may be harmful to his life. In addition, nutrition labels also play an important role in assisting an individual to moderate his weight. Reading and understanding the nutrition labels help an individual to make the right choice of the food that may help the regulate weight loss or weight gain. Since the nutrition labels contain the contents of food nutrients in a given food, it enables people to consume the right nutrient hence healthy living. It is therefore important to consider how and what will be changed in regard to nutrition labels to make them more efficient.
The use of effective nutritional labels will eliminate unhealthy products in the market. There are several solutions to issues of nutritional labels which is necessary for a general health of individuals. First, there is need to have a common basis for standardized use of nutritional claims across countries. Some countries such as Canada have made it mandatory that companies provide the amount of nutrients in the food as well as the health claims about the foods. Countries can establish rules and regulations as to the use of certain elements in the packet foods such as the use of probiotics. Secondly, there is the need to have certain policies that focus on providing the consumers with easy to understand nutrition information so that manufactures more effective label. A more informed public will compel producing companies to give more accurate information in the labels. The United States; for example, is focusing on updating Nutrition Facts Panel to improve the level of clarity in the labeling of the packed foods and by recommending a standardized uniform labeling system (Roberto & Khandpur, 2014). Thirdly, there is the need to pass certain laws such as Nutrition Labeling and Education which will compel manufacturers to provide standardized nutrition information for their packed foods. The information that may be required in the standard label includes level of calories, carbohydrate, fiber, protein and cholesterol in the packed food. Finally, there is the need to have FOP labels that will display nutritional information in an easy to understand format. The kind of label can come in the form of a single checkmark symbol which the consumers can easily trace to show the level of different components in the food including fats, fiber, saturated fat and calories.
References
Roberto, C. A., & Khandpur, N. (2014). Improving the design of nutrition labels to promote healthier food choices and reasonable portion sizes. International Journal of Obesity, 38(S1), S25.
Shapiro, Ralph (2015). Nutrition Labeling Handbook (Food Science and Technology). CRC Press. Print.