Banning Front-of-Package Food Labels: First Amendment Constraints on Public Health Policy

Publication Title

Public Health Nutrition

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2010

Abstract

In recent months, the FDA has begun a crackdown on misleading nutrition and health claims on the front of food packages by issuing warning letters to manufacturers and promising to develop stricter regulatory standards. Leading nutrition policy experts Marion Nestle and David Ludwig have called for an even tougher approach: a ban on all nutrition and health claims on the front of food packages. Nestle and Ludwig argue that most of these claims are scientifically unsound and misleading to consumers and that eliminating them would ‘aid educational efforts to encourage the public to eat whole or minimally processed foods and to read the ingredients list on processed foods’. Nestle and Ludwig are right to raise concerns about consumer protection and public health when it comes to front-of-package food labels, but an outright ban on front-of-package nutrition and health claims would violate the First Amendment. As nutrition policy experts develop efforts to regulate front-of-package nutrition and health claims, they should be mindful of First Amendment constraints on government regulation of commercial speech.

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External Links

SSRN

Recommended Citation

Timothy D. Lytton, Banning Front-of-Package Food Labels: First Amendment Constraints on Public Health Policy, 14 Pub. Health Nutrition 1123 (2010).

DOI

10.1017/s1368980010002843

Volume

14

Issue

6

First Page

1123

Last Page

1126

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