The Food and Drug Administration announced in late 2024 that it was updating the definition of healthy on food labels.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has ordered the delay of a new rule updating the definition of “healthy” on food product labels.
The new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final rule will not go into effect until April 28, a delay from the originally announced implementation date of Feb. 25, Kennedy said in an update on Tuesday.
Kennedy pointed to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which directs agencies to consider postponing the effective dates for pending rules to review them for “questions of fact, law, and policy that the rules may raise.”
“The temporary delay in the effective date until April 28, 2025, is necessary to give Agency officials the opportunity for further review and consideration of the new regulation, consistent with the memorandum described previously,” Kennedy said.
The FDA announced in late 2024 that it was updating the definition of healthy on food labels, in the first major revision since the FDA first defined the word in 1994.
“Given that nutrition science has evolved since the 1990s, this final rule updates the definition of ‘healthy’ to be consistent with current nutrition science and Federal dietary guidance to help ensure that consumers have access to more complete, accurate, and up-to-date information on food labels,” the agency said at the time.
Under the new definition, manufacturers could label certain foods as healthy that currently cannot be, such as salmon, while others that are currently eligible for a healthy label, such as sugary cereal, would become ineligible.
The framework established under the rule includes mandating that a vegetable product must have at least half a cup of a vegetable to be labeled healthy. A dairy product must have at least two-thirds a cup of dairy to meet the updated requirements.
Proteins such as eggs and some oils, including 100 percent oils, can also be labeled healthy under the rule.
The compliance date for the rule was to be February 2028. That date has not been changed, Kennedy said on Tuesday.
Manufacturers are welcome to start complying with the rule ahead of the compliance date, officials have said.
