CSPI Targets Serving Sizes in Letter to FDA

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently sent a letter to
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg
urging the agency to act on an April 2005 advance notice of proposed
rulemaking (ANPR) related to serving-size regulations. According to the letter,
CSPI first responded to the ANPR by asking FDA to (i) “take enforcement
action against manufacturers that mislabel products as multiple servings
when they are typically consumed in one eating occasion,” and (ii) “initiate a
rulemaking proceeding to revise the Reference Amounts Currently Consumed
(‘RACC’) regulations to reflect consumption patterns that have developed
since the data were collected” in the 1970s. In particular, the consumer
watchdog has singled out canned soup, ice cream, coffee creamer, and
aerosol non-stick cooking sprays as bearing “unrealistic” serving-size labels
that “understate the calories, sodium and saturated fat consumers are likely to
get from those products.”

“Given the prevalence of hypertension, heart disease, and stroke in America,
we need accurate food labels that would ensure that consumers would
really know what they’re likely to consume,” said CSPI Executive Director
Michael Jacobson in an August 2, 2011, press release, which noted that FDA is
currently reviewing serving sizes as part of broader food label revisions. “The
FDA should define serving sizes to reflect what consumers actually eat, as the
law requires, not what the soup industry pretends that they eat.”