After decades of lobbying, the US government has finally started taking action to warn consumers about the hazards of ultra-processed foods: your potato chips, granola bars, cereal, frozen pizza, even many types of store-bought bread.

As I reported last year, there is mounting scientific evidence linking such ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, to disorders that range from obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure to depression, anxiety, and autoimmune disorders. Precisely what is classified as a UPF isn’t perfect and the category can sometimes be too broad, as my colleague Marina Bolotnikova explained in December, but there’s still a growing consumer desire for clarity about what we’re buying and eating.

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Earlier this year, in an effort to combat the rising burden of these chronic diseases, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under former President Joe Biden proposed a new policy that would require food producers to add new nutrition labels to the front of most packaged foods, warning consumers about the high fat, sodium, and sugar content typically found in UPFs. New Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy Jr., will likely continue this work; he has called UPFs “poison,” and has promised reform.

A handful of countries in Latin America and Europe have already introduced similar front-of-package nutrition labels. In 2020, Mexico passed a law that required a variety of warning labels on all packaged foods and beverages; the labels include black stop-sign shaped figures that indicate if the product has excessive sugar, sodium, or saturated fats. Chile was the first country to pass such a law back in 2012. The UK has a similar system in place, but companies are not legally required to add the warnings to their products.

The US may be late to the nutrition-warning game, but the good news is that similar efforts in other places have been effective in raising consumer awareness of UPF’s nutritional hazards and in........

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