Is there a single govt website to get ingredients used in food products?

September 10, 2009 6:38 PM

Every food item we buy has the ingredients listed in its cover. Is it required by law? If yes, which govt agency checks for the validity of the claims in the ingredients? I am asking this because, recently, two high school kids found that a well known company was lying about the presence of vitamin C in its products.

1. Is it required by law, that every food item sold should list the ingredients used?

2. Who (which govt agency, in US) checks for the validity of the ingredients list, their amount and other claims made by the manufacturers?

3. Is there any govt website (in US) that can give me the ingredients used in any food product?

posted by raghuram to health & fitness (15 comments total)

1. Yes. 2. Food and Drug Administration. 3. Not that I know of.
posted by halogen at 6:43 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]

I used to work in the pharmaceutical/personal products industry. The FDA audited us pretty often to make sure we had proper quality control procedures, and the data to back up our claims. We had to test the raw materials for purity, test the batches of product during and after production in the mix tanks, and test the final product after it had been filled into bottles. They kept a pretty tight control on everything, and we weren't even making anything taken internally, like medications or foods. (In order to claim our lotion had vitamin E in it, for instance, it had to be above a certain percentage of the final product.)
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 6:46 PM on September 10

@green eyed monster
That's quite comforting.

How did GSK get away with false advertising? possibly that particular product isn't sold in the US?
posted by raghuram at 6:52 PM on September 10

For ingredients:

1. Yes

2. The FDA

3. No, not really.

For nutrition facts (which is where the amount of things like vitamin C are listed):

1. Yes

2. The Food Safety and Inspection Service, specifically "Any inspector or other individual employed by the Department or any cooperating agency who is authorized by the Secretary [of Agriculture or his or her delegate] to do any work or perform any duty in connection with the Program."

3. Not really. You can look up nutrition facts, though.
posted by jedicus at 6:56 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]

How did GSK get away with false advertising? possibly that particular product isn't sold in the US?

The article suggests yes: "GSK said in a statement yesterday that concerns about vitamin C only affected some products in Australia and New Zealand."GSK has conducted thorough laboratory testing of vitamin C levels in Ribena in all other markets. This testing has confirmed that Ribena drinks in all other markets, including the UK, contain the stated levels of vitamin C, as described on product labels."
posted by jedicus at 6:57 PM on September 10

Sorry, I should clarify that what I was trying to get at with the second set of answers was that the FSIS also has a role, though generally only where animal products are involved.
posted by jedicus at 7:01 PM on September 10

Note that in the case of your link it looks like the claim is not about a hard number on the ingredients, but a strictly true but fuzzy and misleading claim that "the blackcurrants in Ribena have four times the vitamin C of oranges".

After all, the blackcurrants in this comment have four times the vitamin C of oranges, as well.
posted by fleacircus at 7:08 PM on September 10 [1 favorite]

The FDA monitors drugs, medical devices, dietary supplements and cosmetics pretty closely, but my impression is that they pay relatively little attention to actual food. (Which is corroborated by the Wiki page's lack of info on current food monitoring.) It's probably because they have a finite budget and consider it more important to monitor drugs than food. The USDA keeps tabs on meat, which is probably the most spoilage-prone type of food, and that's probably good enough for public health.

Interestingly, the FDA got its start due to big problems with food adulteration and drug safety was tacked on later, but nowadays the food supply is pretty clean (large-scale outbreaks of food-related illness are rare) and the risk from mis-formulated food is a lot lower than the risk from mis-formulated drugs. For example, if your Ribena has no vitamin C in it, you should still get enough from other sources if you're eating a balanced diet. But if your medicine contains no active drug, you could be in a world of hurt.

I'm not too worried about it but I'm highly skeptical of certain food labels, especially low-priced imported brands. No way could some of those labels be telling the truth, but I don't expect the FDA to swoop in and straighten them out. Caveat emptor, I guess.
posted by Quietgal at 7:18 PM on September 10

How did GSK get away with false advertising? possibly that particular product isn't sold in the US?

We have similar rules here for food labelling as well as a government department who's job it is to track such things. Upholding the standards is done by Food Standards Australia and New Zealand. So it's not just a case of a different country having different rules, the Ribena thing was illegal here just as it would have been in the US.

A big part of the Ribena case was the wording of the advertising claim made by the company. They said that blackcurrents have four times the Vitamin C of oranges, which is actually correct, but sounded like they were saying that Ribena itself had more Vitamin C then orange juice and this was rulded as misleading. None of that is a food labelling issue per se. From what I can gather now (keep in mind this is an old case, the original testing was in 2004), some of the food labels were incorrect too and GSK claimed this was due to testing issues. If it was a USA based case this part is where the FDA would come in.

You could also argue that actually they didn't get away with it, as they pleaded guilty and were eventually fined. That link has quite a lot of backstory included btw. But yes, the authorities didn't pick up on it originally when arguably they should have. We don't have enough money to test every food product out there to see if they meet their claims, which I'm guessing goes for other countries too. I have no idea if we're any better or worse than other places in this regard, and without that info it's impossible to say whether a company is more or less likely to get away with the same thing in the US
posted by shelleycat at 7:21 PM on September 10

I worked for a small specialty food manufacturer (we stocked the major grocers in and around the Twin Cities) and we could have written whatever we wanted on the nutrition and ingredients labels. I suspect there is widespread fudging of these.
posted by hellboundforcheddar at 7:28 PM on September 10

A bit off topic, but if you would like to know what could possibly be in there and not on the ingredients list, here's the FDA guide on Acceptable Defect Levels Defect Levels Handbook.
e.g. US FDA/CFSAN Defect Action Level Handbook gives the amount of nasty stuff that is acceptable in commodity items e.g. bugs in berries, mold in jam, pits in dates.
posted by crenquis at 7:44 PM on September 10

In the US, at least, food and drugs are closely monitored by the FDA, but nutritional supplements are regulated under a different, less stringent, set of rules. This appears to back that up.

If my memory is correct, there was this big scare in the '90s that the FDA would ban echinacea and its ilk, which led to the Dietary Supplements and Health and Education Act of 1994. This law weakened the FDA's ability to monitor a whole class of consumables.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 8:47 PM on September 10

I worked for a food company. The FDA has plenty of regulations about what a label should look like and what it must contain, but enforcement is rare. We actually got nailed at one point because a compteitor made a complaint about a minor error. Unless someone at the FDA gets a bunch of phone calls, there's almost no oversight as to the truthi-ness of the labeling.
posted by GilloD at 8:55 PM on September 10

There's no government site, but you can find nutrition information for just about anything via google and a little patience.
posted by delmoi at 9:37 PM on September 10

Peapod (the online grocer) has nutrition facts labels and ingredients for all of the products they sell. If you have access to that, it's a pretty easy way to look it up.
posted by smackfu at 6:03 AM on September 11