Disable Food Labels

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a new set of guidance documents that require manufacturers that sell upward of $10 million in food annually to label foods differently. Rather than providing only nutrition facts for single servings of foods being sold, food manufacturers must also include nutrition facts for the entire package. Manufacturers that sell less than $10 million in food annually have until January 1st, 2021 to comply with these new requirements.

Many people who favor these new requirements do so for what appears to be good reason. When consumers are made aware of the calories in a food package, they are supposedly more likely to change their eating habits with respect to that food so as not to develop eating patterns that will set them on the path toward obesity. This regulation, when interpreted charitably, nudges consumers of manufactured foods to make responsible eating decisions that will serve their own long-term interests while also serving the interests of members of a society that increasingly pushes the costs of irresponsible health decisions on those who are not making them.

I argue, however, that we have better reason to denounce rather than support the enactment of these regulations. Firstly, these regulations are likely not to be effective in the ways that their designers intend. Secondly, they may have the unintended consequence of worsening the health of marginalized peoples–namely, those with restrictive eating disorders. Lastly, justifications for these regulations rest on the soundness of public health paternalism as an ethical doctrine, which it is not. For these reasons, we ought to condemn not only mandated two-column nutrition labels, but any kind of mandatory nutrition labeling. Those who are skeptical of this view will find that it is not as radical as I let on. I dedicate the final portion of this post to suggesting how we might respect a person’s “right to know” while also evading nutritional paternalism.

Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) requires qualifying chain restaurants display the calorie counts of the foods they sell. Studies have shown that mandatory calorie counts do little, if anything, to change the eating habits of the general population when eating out. Why, then, should we believe that mandating the display of calorie counts on foods that will likely be eaten in the privacy of one’s home will change their eating habits? At best, the display of these two-column nutrition labels will inform consumers who otherwise would not have been. But informing people ought not come at the cost of exacerbating serious medical conditions that afflict a marginalized group.

Individuals with restrictive eating disorders like anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and orthorexia nervosa develop an obsessional focus on numbers–be they calories consumed, calories burnt, or pounds on a scale. Because of this, calorie counts on food can stand in the way of individuals with such diseases from fully recovering from them. When an anorexic realizes that a package of Oreos contains 1,920 calories, she will abstain from eating any because her fear of calorific food intake will overtake her rationalization that one serving of Oreos is approximately 150 calories. Yes, every person has the “right to know” what they are eating and what effect it will have on their bodies. But people likewise have a right to be willfully ignorant of what they are eating so they can fully recovery from a debilitating disorder like anorexia which has a mortality rate of 10%.

If we have a right to know what the contents of the foods we eat are, and we likewise have a right to be ignorant of the contents of the foods we eat, then public policy should not be dictated by what will optimize health. Even if we had good reason to believe that pronouncedly showcasing the nutritional facts of foods would optimize the health of citizens,–which we don’t– we would not be justified in suggesting that the optimization of health is and ought to be the goal of every citizen. Some people prize the enjoyment of wine and cheesecake over being perfectly healthy. Moreover, they ought to be able to act in accordance with these preferences if they are to be properly understood as free. To enforce policies that treat health as the only value which ought to matter to citizens is to treat citizens paternalistically.

So as not to be paternalistic, policy must be written such that our rights to knowledge and ignorance can be maximally respected when it comes to the nutritional facts of certain foods. One way to do this is by requiring stores that carry food to have nutritional information of all the food they carry available in case a customer is curious. Perhaps an online database could be compiled with nutritional facts of all foods provided by food manufacturers. This way, people who want the information can find it while those who wish to be in the dark can be for recovery, or any other reason for that matter.