The FDA says water can be labeled as ‘healthy’

In December 2024, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its final guidelines for what foods can be labeled as “healthy” in American grocery stores. The new rule, which is the FDA’s first substantial update to healthy labeling requirements since 1994, sets stricter limits on added sugars—the 1994 rule had no limit on sugar (added or natural)—and sodium. It also removes caps on total fat (but not saturated fat).

With these limits in place, the FDA has deemed that foods such as salmon, avocados, olive oil, and water—yes, water—can now be branded “healthy” in grocery stores. (Breathe a sigh of relief, millennials and Gen Z. The government has said your avocado toast is healthy, so long as you use the right bread.)

These foods being deemed healthy should come as a shock to no one. Since 2002, the American Heart Association has recommended that Americans eat salmon and other fish rich in omega-3s at least once per week. The Mediterranean diet, which is low in sugary, processed foods and rich in healthy fats such as olive oil and avocados, has been ranked the healthiest in the world for nearly a decade and is linked to longer lifespans in women. As for water, do consumers really need to be told it’s healthy?

The FDA has long tried to play the role of dietician, to the detriment of public health. In the 1970s and 1980s, concerns over natural saturated fat from butter caused the widespread adoption of Crisco and margarine, which at the time were high in artificial trans fats from partially hydrogenated oils. Studies in the 1990s linked these artificial trans fats to heart disease and health groups began communicating their health consequences to the public in the early 2000s. Still, it took until 2015 for the FDA to remove the “generally recognized as safe” label from these foods. Until this new rule, sugary breakfast cereals and toaster pastries could be packaged as healthy if they met the criteria for other nutritional factors such as fat, cholesterol, and fiber.

With consumers and health groups generally agreeing on what’s healthy—a diet rich in whole foods and minimally processed ingredients—it’s strange that the FDA feels the need to weigh in on the issue at all. The irrelevancy of the rule is further demonstrated by the agency’s admission that only “a small number (0 to 0.4 percent)” of people who claim to follow current dietary guidelines “would use the ‘healthy’ implied nutrient content claim.”

American consumers don’t need
federal bureaucrats spending taxpayer
dollars to define what common knowledge already tells us. Salmon, avocados,
and water don’t need a government stamp of approval to be recognized as healthy. The FDA, if it exists at all, should focus on meaningful priorities such as food safety and transparency, leaving individuals to make their own informed dietary choices.