Kind Snacks Is Fighting For The Right To Call Nuts 'Healthy'

Should healthy fats be allowed to bear a "healthy" label?  The fruit-and-nut snack company Kind is pushing back after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued the company a warning letter in March for misleading labeling. The agency asked Kind to strip a "+" symbol and "healthy" claims from its packaging and website. Kind is in the process of removing the offending terms, but the company's leadership took issue with one specific criticism -- that its snack bars contained too much saturated fat to bear the term "healthy" on the label. That fat, Kind says, comes from healthful sources, namely the bars' whole nuts and seeds.  The FDA's current guidelines require that products labeled as "healthy" contain no more than a gram of saturated fat, and that saturated fat make up no more than 15 percent of the product's total calories. But while a low-fat diet was a hallmark of nutrition in the 1980s and 1990s, more recent nutrition guidelines eschew refined and processed low-fat foods in favor of healthy fats. The majority of natural saturated fats come from meat and dairy products, which nutrition experts don't recommend consuming in high quantities. They do, however, recommend making "healthy swaps" and eating fat -- both saturated and unsaturated -- from nutrient-dense health foods like fish, nuts, seeds, olive oil and avocados.  On Tuesday, Kind issued a citizen petition signed by 12 high-profile nutritionists, asking the FDA to update it...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news