WASHINGTON — Wondering if you are eating too much added sugar? The nutrition label on your food may one day help you figure it out.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed that nutrition facts labels include the percentage of your recommended daily intake of added sugars in a food item – the “percent daily value.”

Adding new line for added sugars, or those that don’t occur naturally, is part of an overhaul of the nutrition facts label proposed last year by the Obama administration.

While the labels include percent daily values for other nutrients, the proposal didn’t include one for added sugars. Since then, a government advisory committee recommended that people get no more than 10 percent of calories daily from added sugars.

The FDA proposal would be based on that number, meaning that added sugars should be no more than 200 calories, or about 50 grams, in a recommended daily diet of 2,000 calories.

So if a food label says something has 50 grams of added sugars, the percent daily value for added sugars would be listed as 100 percent.

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Currently, the nutrition facts label lists percent daily values for total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, total carbohydrates, dietary fiber, iron, calcium and vitamins A and C.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that has pushed for more information on nutrition facts panels, called the FDA’s move “a major public health victory,” pointing out that a 20 ounce sugary soda can have 130 percent of the sugar a person is supposed to consume in a day.

The sugar industry said there isn’t enough science to justify the proposal.

The FDA said the proposal is open for public comment for 75 days.


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