How to Read New Vitamin Labels

The FDA has recently changed the way some nutrient dosage and units are expressed on labels. article See Government site examples. These examples show the old units in (400IU) after the new units so one can get an idea of conversion. It will be confusing for some time. Here are the changes for food labels. 

Do New Label Requirements Clarify or Confuse?

While the FDA label changes are probably designed to improve label information, any change take time before Public confusion dissapates since the old methods have to be wiped clean before the new ones simplify.

It appears that companies might still be able to hide or disguise nutrient sources and whether vitamins are natural or synthetic, since information could be listed in ingredients below nutrition box where customers are not used to looking. This might not have been an oversight, but a special interest perk. It is the information that cannot be added to labels that also forms issues of confusion.

Some Nutrient Daily Values have changed based on recent science as well as some RDI, Recommended Daily Intake, plus also some units of measure. ref <Check out increases and especially decreases, some very significant. Potassium RDI under the old system was only achieved by less than 20% of the population, so the RDI amounts were lowered by almost 40%. Was this change for Public Health or to reduce Federal meal costs since each meal is required to have 33% of RDI for each vitamin?

A new term has emerged, DFE , standing for Dietary Folate Equivalent. Since supplement folic acid is absorbed better than natural food folates, to equalize these differences, a DFE number is given not based on weight. Under the new labels, synthetic folic acid would have a smaller weight number than the natural form and may give the impression of lower value, so the DFE number hopes to balance this factor so the synthetic is not perceived as a negative.

CRITICAL NOTE: Scientists have discovered that over a certain dosage, the synthetic folic acid spills into the blood stream as unmetabolized folic acid. This unmetabolized folic acid suppresses natural killer cell activity of the immune system. A factor that could prove negative depending upon other conditions. Plus, synthetic folic acid has also shown up in blood tests of babies from mothers who did not consume supplements. This means it was just from the synthetic folic acid used to fortify grain foods. 

Don't expect these new rules for labels are just for clarification. They look like an attempt to cloud the differences between natural and synthetic vitamins. Plus, using weight only instead of iinternational units for vitamin D and E will take some time for the Public to adapt. Certain entities benefit from these changes while others may be hurt. Rarely is the Public the one benefiting. Why was the importance of Potassium reduced so much? Is this another example of special interest tampering? Watch for updates on this issue. 

Remember: Old research and articles used the old system which will make it difficult to compare to the new system, especially once the voluntary inclusion of the (old units) gets discarded off labels.