Starting next year, manufacturers will be prohibited from calling their product “whole grain” unless more than 50 percent of the product is composed of whole grain, the Department of Health (DOH) announced yesterday.
Food made from whole grains, such as bread, rice, cookies, noodles, pasta and cereal, differ from food made with white, processed flour because whole-grain foods are made with the whole grain kernel, including the outer shell of the grain. Whole grain foods have recently become popular with consumers because of its higher nutrition content, because making food with processed flour has a much lower fiber content.
However, many whole grain foodstuffs currently sold on the market do not contain enough whole grain to live up to their name, health officials said. Despite selling at slightly higher prices than foods made from processed flour, some food products that claim on the packaging to be “whole grain” actually contain no more than 5 percent whole grains, while others are not made with whole grains at all.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Section Chief Liu Fang-ming (劉芳銘) said consumers are misled into believing that a “whole-grain” food product they purchase contains more whole grains than it actually does.
To stop food manufacturers from selling falsely advertised products, the FDA has decided to revise regulations governing whole-grain foodstuffs to require that more than half of the product must contain whole grains before it can be advertised as “whole grain” on its product packaging.
The FDA defines whole grains as those containing the whole kernel, including the outer shells, of plants including amaranth, barley, buckwheat, bulgur, corn, millet, quinoa, rice, rye, oats, sorghum, teff, triticale, wheat, wild rice, fonio, canary seed and coixseed.
Manufacturers have a one-year grace period to make changes to the content of their products or packaging to meet the new regulations before the rules become effective, Liu said. Afterward, food makers could be fined between NT$40,000 and NT$200,000 for violating the Food Hygiene Act (食品衛生管理法).
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