They also are more empowered to make well-informed purchase decisions than ever before. Consumers often conduct extensive research on the ingredients and nutritional information before they buy. In response to consumer demand for nutritional information, the FDA recently unveiled an official update to the standard package labeling. To comply with these new regulations, retail brands will not only have to update product packaging by July of 2018, but their ecommerce product content as well. This change will impact almost every product with a nutritional label on Amazon, Walmart.com, and other online retailers.
FDA Nutritional Labeling Continues to Evolve
The last major change to the FDA’s nutritional labeling regulations was back in 2006, when trans-fat identification was added to differentiate it from saturated fat. Nine years later the FDA moved to ban all trans-fat from food, as their understanding of that substance evolved. With the new changes announced last month, sugar is coming under fire. Manufacturers will be required to provide the amount of sugars added to a product to better highlight the difference between foods with natural sugar (fruit) and ones that have additional sugar added by a manufacturer (soda). Certain food and beverage categories might feel significant impact of the new “added sugar” labeling requirements, for example, soft drinks and other manufactured snacks.
Brands Should Optimize Online Portfolios and Product Content
Food and beverage manufacturers can respond to these new FDA regulations in a number of ways. For example, they can use this opportunity to highlight their diet and sugar-free portfolios both in-store and online so that they can retain health-conscious shoppers, or even identify gaps in their portfolio to develop new products to meet consumer demand. Brands can create product content for the digital shelf that emphasizes the health benefits of these products. Additionally, brands can focus on customer-centric storytelling that emphasizes the lifestyle and identity aspects of their brands.
However, “added sugar” labeling is not the only update the FDA will put in place. Additional changes include:
- Calorie count will now be shown in a larger, bolder font. Since most consumers look for this information first, brands will be required by law to make it more easily readable.
- Dual column labels with show nutritional data per serving and per package for certain foods that the FDA deems could be consumed in one sitting, such as a small bag of chips a brand might currently label as two servings but that it typically consumed in one.
- Requirements for serving sizes that more closely reflect the amounts of food that people currently eat.
The extent of these new regulations multiplied by the number of products at every online retailer may seem like making these updates is an insurmountable task for brands. Clavis’ ecommerce intelligence can help brands track content compliance across their portfolios and across online retailers globally. Schedule a demo of our platform to learn how Clavis can help your brand manage and scale product content management across the digital shelf.
