Correlation != Causation
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Sure, but no evidence that food labeling is a culprit. Personally I’d blame that on choices made by individuals and a culture that encourages such choices rather than a food label. I’ll take a look at each article you provided and comment.
Its a complicated issue for sure, and one we seem to be repeatedly failing at addressing.
I don’t think people want to be fat and unhealthy. The individual incentive should be there, but its a political minefield to navigate.
MAGA wants to blow up a lot of things and start over. I think a lot of it is misguided and misinformed. Food quality is one area where I think there is plenty of evidence of a broken system that affects almost everyone regardless of politics. Put it all out there on the table and lets find a solution.
The diet industry 90B a year and growing. Many people are struggling to make better choices using the information they have available for free.
It is a politically easy answer to blame individual choices and enable “freedom” because we understand the backlash that comes with things like taking away those choices.
Maybe we need to treat ultraprocessed foods similar to how we have treated cigarettes.
First article: Sure, moving the label to the front of the package can’t hurt. I’m conflicted about the green/yellow/red approach… seems subject to manipulation. Maybe “high in” is a good idea but again subject to manipulation. Probably better than nothing.
Zero evidence in this article that existing labels are worse than no labels. 
Can I point out that the default assumption is that labels are providing a benefit and ask you to show the evidence of that? The only clear evidence I have seen is on trans fats.
Removing labels is a contrarian view for sure. It’s a discussion point more than proposed solution.
Second article: This mostly says that most Americans are dumb. In other news, water is wet. I’m on board with the idea that certain improvements could be made to labeling such as adding requirements around claims such as “made with whole grains”.
This article highlights some imperfections in food labeling but doesn’t remotely support the notion that no labels would be an improvement over the status quo.
Your conclusion doesn’t follow. Could the reason the labels are confusing is the producer wants it to be? I really don’t think less information will produce better outcomes.
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Do you think sodium content is not beneficial?
Third article:
Yeah, labels like “sugar free” and “fat free” are a pet peeve of mine, and further restrictions are clearly needed.
Gosh maybe 30 years ago I recall seeing a segment on a news program about “fat free” clocking spray. This “fat free” product is actually 100% pure fat, but the serving size is less than 0.5 grams so it’s allowed to make that claim. They demonstrated on tv that it was impossible, even with special lab equipment, to generate a short enough spray as to get only the “1/25th of a second spray” that was the “serving size”.
That crap needs to stop. And maybe it has… I haven’t noticed fat free cooking spray at the store in a while, but then again I haven’t looked.
My verdict on this one is mixed. Claiming a 100% fat product is “fat free” should clearly not be allowed. That’s an example of the marketing claim on the label actually making it worse. (in this case flat out lying to consumers). The bar for “sugar free” and “fat free” needs to be significantly more restrictive than “slightly less than 0.5 grams per arbitrarily determined serving”. And in general serving sizes need to be non-ridiculous.
I’m going to give you partial credit for this one. It certainly spells out reforms that are desperately needed. I still don’t think it supports the notion that if you removed every label from every product that in aggregate we’d be better off.
It’s both quantity and quality, I think. And better quality will probably result in lower quantity because people will feel fuller when they make healthier choices.
But certainly eating the correct number of empty calories is healthier than eating way too much healthy food, so in that sense it’s more of a quantity problem, I guess.
I use the label to work out salt and sugar content. Some brands of Korean seaweed are too salty for my taste, so if I’m buying a new brand I’ll check the salt percentage. For sugar, some pasta sauces or bbq sauces are much sweeter than others - I try to avoid those.
If the labels were removed, at least have them online so I can google them.
I dated a guy (British, living in the states, in case that’s relevant since we are discussing Americans’ food choices) who ate way too much healthy food.
His diet was almost entirely fish and vegetables with a smattering of chicken and beef and almost no carbs at all, other than the sugars in the wine he drank.
I lost a nice amount of weight while we dated because my diet was so healthy.
But I ate a reasonable portion whereas he consumed copious quantities of salmon or haddock each meal. He was overweight. Not tremendously so… he also exercised a fair amount. But some.
I think he is the exception though and it’s rare to find someone with a diet that is healthy other than the quantity of calories consumed.
Sure… you cannot call something “chicken” if it is actually pork or cardboard or plastic. You can’t say it’s “milk” if it’s melamine-colored water.
If you label a food peanut free and claim that it is made in a facility that does not process tree nuts, those claims have to actually be true. (For people with allergies this is literally a matter of life and death.)
Other than some notable exceptions on marketing claims such as “fat free” the labels are required to be accurate. If the package says that two cookies contain 100 calories then, subject to some rounding tolerances (that I wouldn’t mind reducing) that’s how many calories two cookies contain. If the chocolate chip cookies contain 100 calories per two cookies and the peanut butter cookies contain 60 calories per cookie you have to spend some time figuring out which one has fewer calories but it’s possible to do so.
Less allowance for rounding is a change I’m in favor of.
Probably.
If the information is intentionally confusing because the producer made it that way, is the average use of that information positive or negative?
Yup, I can’t really prove the claim is right. But also, you can’t really prove that it is wrong.
That’s a product description, not a nutrition label.
Sure, that is important, and manufacturers should not make inaccurate claims generally.
Can I assume from this that the person using that label is hoping to reduce their calorie consumption? This is actually a good example of where things start to go wrong.
lol…what kind of salmon?
My favorite dieting technique is to eat foods that I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever really eat too much of.
Like, I don’t know, say you eat eggs. Ain’t nobody going to sit around eating so many eggs they get fat. Bleh. Problem solved.