OK, Now, Hide the Best Things About Your Product on the Back of the Package

The growing fight between the federal government and the food and beverage industry over front-of-package nutritional labeling is going to come down to these words: "Some product icons may also provide information about fiber, vitamins, calcium and other nutrients that are essential for a healthy diet."

This sentence is taken from the new web site that describes the labeling system being pursued by the industry and being promoted now in the early stages of a $50 million consumer awareness campaign. Companies understandably want to be able to tout the positive nutritional attributes of their branded products in addition to listing, in an easy-to-understand, standard format, what might be called the "baddies": sugar, saturated fats, calories and sodium.

Mainstream food and beverage manufacturers have spent billions of dollars reformulating old products and introducing new ones along better-for-you lines over the last several years, so why shouldn't they want to promote these advantages to consumers right there on the front of the package?

The Federal government seems resolute against that idea, even if it's in a standardized way and not subject to some of the abuses by a few brand marketers in the recent past. The government's Institute of Medicine is expected to come out next month with its next update on what regulators would like to see manufacturers put and not put on the front of their packages.

Already, in an earlier phase of the process, IOM indicated that it didn't want to include beneficial nutrients such as fiber on the front of packages because consumers could be overwhelmed and confused by the extra information.

Really? An extra couple of little icons — say, six instead of four, as demonstrated on the industry's FactsUpFront.org website — are going to send consumers fleeing the grocery aisles in mass discombobulation?

In any event, some academics have urged the industry at least to wait until the government makes up its mind before advancing the private sector's front-of-package agenda. Then again, those experts include Yale's Kelly Brownell, who has been a vocal advocate for taxes on carbonated soft drinks. Not exactly someone the industry will or perhaps should listen to.

So food and beverage makers are pressing ahead. "The private sector is well-positioned to move this initiative forward quickly and efficiently, and to get it into the marketplace as soon as possible, so that consumers can have access to an important and useful tool that testing shows will enjoy wide consumer acceptance," the Grocery Manufacturers Association said in a statement.

And with obesity a health scourge that threatens to swallow up the American healthcare budget, do we have a minute to waste?