Nutrition facts label
Additionally, there is a requirement for ingredients to be listed in order from highest to lowest quantity, according to their weight.
The label was mandated for most food products under the provisions of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA), per the recommendations of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It was one of several controversial actions taken during the tenure of FDA Commissioner Dr. David Kessler. The law required food companies to begin using the new food label on packaged foods beginning May 8, 1994. (Meat and poultry products were not covered by NLEA, though the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed similar regulations for voluntary labeling of raw meat and poultry.) Foods labeled before that day could use the old label. This appeared on all products in 1995. The old label was titled "Nutrition Information Per Serving" or simply, "Nutrition Information".
Folate
When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration set the folic acid fortification regulation in 1996, the projected increase in folic acid intake was 100 µg/d. Mandatory fortification began 1 January 1998. The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics conducts biannual National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States. Some results are reported as What We Eat In America. The 2013–2014 survey reported that for adults ages 20 years and older, men consumed on average of 249 μg/d folate from food plus 207/d μg of folic acid from consumption of fortified foods, for a combined total of 601 μg/d of dietary folate equivalents (DFEs; because each microgram of folic acid counts as 1.7 μg of food folate). For women, the values are 199, 153 and 459 μg/d, respectively. This means that fortification led to a bigger increase in folic acid intake than first projected, and that more than half the adults are consuming more than the RDA of 400 μg (as DFEs), but even so, fewer than half of pregnant women are exceeding the pregnancy RDA of 600 μg/d.