Food traffic lights?

For decades the federal government has tried a variety of gimmicks to get Americans to eat healthier. Yet many federal efforts, such as the heavily criticized and now-defunct food pyramid, have not worked. The nation holds the highest number of obese adults in the world, and chronic diseases such as diabetes continue to exact a massive toll in treatment costs and suffering.

Now the Biden administration is proposing a new strategy, rethinking the standards governing when food can be labeled “healthy” and proposing new nutrition labels that would appear on the front of food boxes. Reforms such as these could help demystify food aisles for the large number of Americans whose grasp of healthy eating is rudimentary, or worse. Or they could just confuse people and invite controversy.

More contentious is the Biden administration’s plan to develop a front-of-package labeling system, which could deter consumers from buying unhealthy foods.

Governments elsewhere have experimented with the idea for years. Chile, for example, requires black warning signs to appear on foods that contain high amounts of sugar, sodium, saturated fat or calories.

Yet, the FDA would have to do things just right for this plan to pay off. For instance, foodmakers would have little incentive to reformulate their products if front-of-box labeling were optional.

The Biden administration foresees a simple star-rating or traffic light scheme, which could not only communicate that certain foods are risky but show consumers which options are healthier. But distilling complex and contentious food science research into simple labels has proven hard.

It would be a public health triumph if the FDA discovered the formula that ranks every food according to its underlying nutritional value — or even came up with rough but reliable approximations. But if it fails, best not to confuse consumers with traffic lights that lead people in the wrong direction.