Starting on Jan. 1 next year, hand-shaken tea shops, convenience stores and fast-food restaurants would have to list on site the total sugars and calories in the freshly made drinks that they sell, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said yesterday as it announced a draft amendment to the Regulations Governing the Labeling of On-site-produced Drinks at Drinks Industry Convenience Chain Stores and Fast-food Industry (連鎖飲料便利商店及速食業之現場調製飲料標示規定).
The proposed amendment also includes modifications to the standards for marking calories, caffeine content and fruit content.
Shops are currently only required to mark the total sugar content of the drinks produced on site, but consumers often do not know how many calories are contained in additional toppings, such as tapioca pearls, pudding, grass jelly, nata de coco jelly or taro balls, FDA Food Safety Division head Lee Wan-chen (李婉媜) said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The proposal would require freshly made drinks sold by beverage stores to have a nutrition label that specifies the sugar and calorie content of all elements of the drink.
They would have to provide the maximum total sugar content, using sugar cubes — equal to five grams of sugar — as the standard unit, as well as the maximum total calories, including toppings, Lee said.
The regulations now require shops to mark the caffeine content of drinks with a red, yellow or green mark — signaling more than 201mg, between 101 and 200mg, and less than 100mg of caffeine respectively, but the amendment would require them to mark the maximum caffeine content as well, Lee said.
Under the proposal, fruit or vegetable drinks that contain less than 10 percent real fruit or vegetable juice would have to be labeled by manufacturers as a “drink,” or a name with the same meaning, Lee said.
Drinks with no real fruit or vegetable juice would have to be renamed as “flavored” or as a “XX flavor” beverage, she added.
Additional reporting by CNA
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