Consumer Discretionary

<p style="text-align: justify;">In the summer of 2016, when I joined Chobani, the FDA had recently passed regulation mandating that all packaged food labels call out &ldquo;added sugars&rdquo; by 2020.</p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">War On Sugar</span>&nbsp;</h3><p style="text-align: justify;">The industry was a twitter &ndash; a consumer &lsquo;war on sugar&rsquo; was already raging and this new labelling would be very bad for many businesses competing in the $8B US snack market.&nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Yet leading better-for-you companies, including my then-employer, were excited. This new labelling standard was going to be an incredible, category-redefining opportunity to broadly educate and inform Americans about the difference between naturally occurring sugars &ndash; like fructose in an apple, or lactose in dairy yogurt &ndash; &nbsp;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The abundant added sugar sweeteners used in so many competitive products; sugars that our bodies cannot process, that we know feed unhealthy addictions, that have fuelled an obesity epidemic, among countless other health-related crises both nationally and internationally.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Unfortunately, among the first orders of business for the current administration when they came to office in 2017, was to delay a transition to the new labelling protocol indefinitely.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">However, some companies went forward anyway &ndash; including KIND bars. Today, despite some questions of ownership and accountability (the Mars Company of M&amp;M fame, holds a 40% stake) &ndash; KIND and its founder, Daniel Lubetzky &ndash; are working behind-the-scenes to shift label laws and food policies at the FDA, along with making an increasingly public effort to correct how food shoppers see the world.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve invested heavily in what&rsquo;s right for society, and we&rsquo;ve always thought that that&rsquo;s ultimately going to be the right answer for us too.&rdquo;</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So again, here&rsquo;s a private company stepping up to act where the public sector is not or will not.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I say it again and again and will keep working on this with clients: the responsibility for bettering our world today and our collective futures &ndash; whether that&rsquo;s about packaging waste &amp; sustainability, health &amp; nutrition, labor &amp; human rights, or so many other important topics &ndash; change and leadership must come from the private sector.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">So, if it &ldquo;turns out the secret ingredient in the $8 billion snack-bar market is actually consumer ignorance, or at least confusion.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /><em><span style="font-size: 10pt;">This <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/fighting-smarter-nutrition-labels-lisa-gralnek/">article</a> was contributed by our expert Lisa Gralnek.</span></em></p><h3 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Frequently Asked Questions Answered by Lisa Gralnek</span></h3><h2><span style="font-size: 12pt;">1. When did added sugars get added to the nutrition label?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">FDA Announced in the year 2016 that a new label will be required on packaged food with more focus om added sugars.&nbsp;</span></p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">2. Does the FDA regulate labelling?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">Yes, all the food labels are regulated by FDA.</p><h2 style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;">3. What must be on a Nutrition Facts label?</span></h2><p style="text-align: justify;">The Nutrition fact label must show all the information including the serving size, calories, total fat, added sugar, nutrients etc.</p>