Is the FDA's "New Sheriff" Too Tough?

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There can no longer be any doubt that with the change of administrations in Washington has come a radical transformation of how serious the Food and Drug Administration now is when it comes to regulating the food industry. Under President Bush, the agency was essentially toothless. Food companies, realizing this, ran wild, promoting their products with the gusto of snake-oil salesmen, and with a similar capacity for shame. Diamond Foods, for example, told customers that its walnuts prevented arthritis, heart disease, and cancer.

This week, the FDA sent warning letters to Diamond and 21 other companies saying essentially: Stop that. And ridiculous claims like Diamond's aren't the only target. Mrs. Smith's Custard Pie can no longer brag about how it's free of trans-fats while at the same time neglecting to mention that it's loaded with saturated fats.

While wielding a stick, the FDA is also reaching out with a carrot. Commissioner Margaret Hamburg wrote a letter to the food industry, asking companies to work together to create standards to make front-of-package claims less odious and more honest. Do that, she implies, and the FDA will be less likely to bring the stick down. 

Nutritionist Marion Nestle told the Chicago Tribune that the FDA's newly aggressive stance reverses a hands-off policy that reigned at the agency for 15 years. And the industry seems to be getting the message. Ivan Wasserman, a lawyer who represents food companies, told the Trib: "There's a new sheriff in town. It's tough to say how relevant this is to consumers. But this will have an effect. Responsible industries will spend some time making sure they're in compliance."

Regular readers of this blog will know that my default position on health-based label claims is that most of them are lies, or at least disingenuous. But while I applaud most of what the FDA is up to in this latest effort, I'm not so sure about the "trans fat" business. Everything else being equal, I think it's just fine for a label to let consumers know that there are no trans fats in a given product.

Melissa Healy of the Los Angeles Times health blog, Booster Shots, goes snarky in her item on the FDA action. "Hard to believe," she writes, "but it turns out that Nestle's Drumstick Classic Vanilla Fudge is not really a health food!"