New FDA rules on what foods can be labeled “healthy” have included salmon and avocados, but not pork, whole milk, or white bread. It’s unclear if farmers will notice a shift.
In a move meant to help consumers figure out what food is good for their health, packaged foods that use “healthy” on the label have to meet a new set of nutrient requirements from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Most fresh foods — vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans — will automatically qualify as healthy. They are joined by some newly minted additions, such as avocados, nuts, higher-fat fish, and olive oil.
But some previously healthy products with added sugar, including white bread and sugary yogurt, got the boot under the new rule, which goes into effect on February 25.
It’s the first time in 30 years that the definition of “healthy” foods have changed, ever since the agency defined the term in 1994. The revisions took nearly a decade to come to fruition after first being floated in 2016 and proposed in 2022, which drew over 400 hundred comments from the public and industry leaders.
Soon after the announcement of the final healthy label rule, the FDA proposed a second, complementary one: a front-of-package nutrition information box with low sodium and low saturated fat nutrient content. That proposal is open for comments on the FDA’s website until May 16, 2025.
The actual “healthy” logo or graphic that manufacturers can put on packages is still in the works, according to the FDA.
Shifting consumer purchasing towards a more healthy diet is a tough, complicated issue for the FDA to tackle, said Brandon McFadden, professor of food policy economics at the University of Arkansas. But he doesn’t think the new healthy definition likely to impact farmers of whole foods.
“I see it more as creating competition within categories and between food manufacturers,” McFadden said.
Sugar and corn producers may be the exception, he added, because of the rule revisions on added sugars in packaged foods.
The long-considered FDA rule arrives as the Trump Administration pauses much of the federal funding and plans to slash the federal workforce.
The International Dairy Foods Association called the ruling “so narrow that few foods, including many nutrient-dense dairy products, will be able to bear the claim.”
Yet Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose slogan is “Make America Healthy Again” and is now President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, may support the changes to the healthy definition. He has long railed against high-fructose corn syrup, blaming the ingredient for childhood obesity, and vowing to ban it. While the use of high-fructose corn syrup use has declined over the last two decades, it still makes up roughly 10 percent of the U.S. corn market, according to reporting by The Guardian.
Use of refined sugar, meanwhile, is higher than ever before. In 2023, 2 million acres of U.S. farmland was dedicated to sugar beet production, primarily in North Dakota and Minnesota, and sugarcane, primarily in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. U.S. farms produced 9,174,000 short tons — or 18.4 billion pounds — of beet sugar and cane sugar in 2023.
The new healthy rule is based on the 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and is meant to encourage diets that meet nutritional needs and reduce the risk of chronic diseases, according to the FDA.
Packaged foods that call themselves healthy must contain a certain amount of food from the main food groups. Those groups — fruit, vegetables, grains, dairy, and protein foods — each have specific limits of sodium, saturated fat, and, new to the updated rule, added sugar.
Grain products, for example, can have 5 grams of added sugar, or 10 percent of the daily value. Fruit products, whether fresh, frozen, or canned, are allowed to add just 1 gram of sugar, or 2 percent of the daily value.
Sodium is set as a standard 230 milligrams, or 10% of the daily value, across the food categories — except for oils such as canola, which are allowed no salt or sugar.
The original healthy rule established in 1994 included a total fat limit as well as a saturated fat limit. The new rule focuses solely on saturated fat. By eliminating the total fat limits, salmon and other seafood with higher levels of unsaturated fats generally seen as beneficial by nutritional scientists, can now be considered healthy.
Instead of shifting a consumer’s grocery list, a healthy label may nudge a customer to abandon their favorite brand for a “healthy” alternative.
Dairy products, game meat (think bison or quail), and eggs are considered healthy with an allowable 2 grams of saturated fat or 10% of the daily value. Seafood, beans, and soy products are allowed half that saturated fat: 1 gram.
But 2% and full-fat milk and cheese do not make the healthy cut.
Reviews from the major food group lobbies have been mixed. The International Dairy Foods Association called the ruling “so narrow that few foods, including many nutrient-dense dairy products, will be able to bear the claim,” in a statement from senior vice president Roberta Wagner. The inclusion of tart cherries as “healthy” prompted praise from the Cherry Marketing Institute. Producers can sweeten tart cherries until the total sugar content meets the amount in unsweetened raisins or 100% grape juice. USA Rice praised the decision to include brown rice — while regretting that white rice did not make the cut.
While game meat and eggs get their own subgroups from the typical meat and eggs protein category, pork and beef were notably absent from the list.
The 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, upon which the healthy rule is based, recommended reducing red meat, which prompted backlash from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
The National Pork Producers Council has not released a statement about the healthy rule nor did the organization respond to requests for comment by Ambrook Research in time for publication.
“I don’t think anybody who’s buying steak doesn’t know that red meat has more saturated fat than pork, and pork has more than poultry.”
However, in February 2022, NPPC commented on the proposed healthy rule by applauding the FDA’s decision to update the healthy term based on current nutritional science. However, it questioned the requirement that the healthy definition be updated every five years, which may result “in products having to be continually reevaluated to maintain their nutritive values in the stated guidelines of the “healthy” definition.”
Instead of shifting a consumer’s grocery list, a healthy label may nudge a customer to abandon their favorite brand for a “healthy” alternative of the same food sitting on the same shelf, McFadden said.
“I don’t think anybody who’s buying steak doesn’t know that red meat has more saturated fat than pork, and pork has more than poultry. I think these things are pretty well-known,” McFadden said. And actually using a logo — once it is designed — on whole foods seems difficult to coordinate. “Would there be some healthy sticker on each avocado?” he asked.
More likely, the ruling may prompt some food manufacturers to reformulate packaged food products to get under the thresholds for sugar and salt, McFadden said.
The packaged food industry must comply with the rule beginning February 25, 2028. Reformulation is estimated to cost food manufacturers upwards of $400 million over 20 years, and package redesign could cost around $280 million, according to the FDA’s calculations.
