How to Read New Vitamin Labels

The FDA has recently changed the way some nutrient dosage and units are expressed on labels. See Government site examples. These examples show the old units in (400IU) after the new units so one can get an idea of conversion. It will be confusing for some time. Here are the changes for food labels. 

It appears that companies might still be able to hide or disguise sources and whether vitamins are natural or synthetic, since information could be listed in ingredients below nutrition box where customers are not used to looking. This might not have been an oversight, but a special interest perk.

Some Nutrient Daily Values have changed based on recent science as well as some RDI, for Recommended Daily Intake, plus some units of measure. ref <Check out increases and especially decreases, some very significant. A new term has emerged, DFE , standing for Dietary Folate Equivalent. Since supplement folic acid is absorbed better than food folates, to equalize these differences, a DFE number is given not based on weight or size or units. The DFE number hopes to balance many factors to arrive at the same level of body influence.

CRITICAL NOTE: Did the Scientists who set the DFE consider the rate of conversion of the synthetic folic acid form by the liver into the natural folate form. Other Scientists have discovered that over a certain dosage, the synthetic folic acid spills into the blood stream as unmetabolized folic acid. If they did not, this could very well influence the DFE results in a very negative direction. Any way, the synthetic form of folic acid is not recommended by the new vitamin criteria because studies have revealed that this unmetabolized folic acid not only suppresses natural killer cell activity, but has also shown up in baby blood tests from mothers who did not consume supplements of folic acid. This means it just came from fortified grain foods.

Don't expect these new rules for labels are just for clarification. They look like an attempt to cloud the differences between natural and synthetic vitamins. Somebody benefits from these changes while others may be hurt. Rarely is the Public the one benefiting. Is this another example of special interest tampering? Watch for updates on this issue. 

Remember: Old research and articles used the old system which will make it difficult to compare to the new system, especially once the voluntary inclusion of the (old units) gets discarded off labels.