"Foodness" is Now a Word: Introducing the New Food Labels
The proposed new food labels from the US federal government are an insult to our intelligence. These labels are designed to 'simplify' the interpretation of a food's quality by using a color-coded scoring system that ranks a food's 'quality' on the basis of three parameters: "nutrition", "foodness" and "welfare". Each parameter will assigned a value from 0 to 5 (from worst to 'best'). The sum of the parameter scores will "help" people judge a food's "quality at a glance". Let's look at each parameter:
Nutrition:This parameter is supposed to represent how nutritious or healthy a food is. A score of zero is supposed to represent a very unhealthy food while 5 is extremely healthy. How exactly the government intends to judge healthiness remains to be seen.
Foodness:No, it's not a word... yet. But foodness represents how 'natural' or unprocessed a food is. Why this is supposed to matter, the government doesn't say.
Welfare: This parameter is designed to help us judge how good or bad is the production of the food for people, animals, the environment, the 'carbon footprint' and perhaps more.
A Better Food Label? Here is a suggestion for a more comprehensible food label. |