In the United States, the past three decades have witnessed tremendous changes in the way the public views the foods it buys. Unlike counterparts in the developing world, where problems of food availability and food quantities still dominate, consumers in the United States (and the West in general) have become increasingly interested in the nutritional quality of the foodstuffs they are offered. As a consequence, nutrition labeling has emerged to play a key role in government regulation of the food supply, in informing consumers about the constituents of the foods they eat, and in the formulation and marketing of food products by the manufacturers.

The importance of food labels has come about in spite of the fact that during the last 20 years or so, policy decisions regarding the implementation of nutrition labeling have been made in a political environment that emphasizes nonintervention in the operation of market economies. Recent legislation in industrialized countries has taken, for the most part, a minimalist approach to the regulation of nutritional quality. But although still controversial, labeling is seen as an acceptable “information remedy” that requires relatively little market intervention, and most Western nations have established some form of legislative guidelines for the regulation of nutrition labeling. With the adoption of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) in 1994 (Caswell and Mojduszka 1996), the United States is currently in the forefront of establishing a mandatory and comprehensive national nutrition labeling policy.

The growing interest in nutrition policy reflects the understanding that foods represent major potential risks to public health because of such factors as foodborne organisms, heavy metals, pesticide residues, food additives, veterinary residues, and naturally occurring toxins. But although these are very real health hazards, scientists believe that the risks associated with nutritional imbalances in the composition of the diet as a whole are the most significant in the longer run, particularly in industrialized countries, where the high percentage of fat in daily diets seems to significantly threaten public health (Henson and Traill 1993).The recognition of nutritional quality as a value in itself has led to a separation of the nutritional from other food safety issues and a growing tendency to develop legislation targeted specifically at nutrition.