I’ve been feeling a bit grumpy (?), conflicted (?)… I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling, but I have thoughts about Canada’s new front-of-package nutrition warnings. Let’s discuss!!
To me, it’s reminiscent of the introduction of gruesome photos and warning labels on cigarettes. I support this move; while I suspect most long-term smokers don’t think twice about the images and warnings, I have to assume that at least some new smokers are put off the habit because of the visual warnings.
The difference, in my mind, is that cigarettes are something humans don’t need to consume. Food is unavoidable and our relationships with it can be challenging (to say the least).
If you’re not in Canada—or haven’t noticed these yet—we now have warning labels on packaged foods that are considered high in saturated fat, sugars, or sodium. The regulations have been in the works for a while, but at the start of this year (2026) manufacturers had to start using these new labels.
I understand the rationale. Nutrition panels aren’t exactly riveting, and having information displayed on the front of a package makes it easier to compare products quickly.
On the other hand, now that these symbols are showing up on SO MANY things in my cupboards, I’m not entirely sure how useful I find them.
If you buy a lovely box of chocolates as a gift, it’s going to have a warning label slapped on the front which seems… not very fun.
I also can’t help wondering whether, particularly in homes where food insecurity is an issue, warnings might add another layer of stress, guilt, or shame to something that’s already complicated??
Certain things are exempt (or conditionally exempt) like butter, eggs, cooking oils, maple syrup (and corn syrup!??), salt, some dairy products, nuts, and regular sugar. In some cases—like sugar, salt, butter, and oils—the government’s rationale is basically that the warning would be redundant. Again, I can see the logic. But if you sit home and eat a stick of butter for lunch or a cup of raw sugar, you’d probably have been better off consuming a handful of chocolate chips or a taco.
A few examples…
First up, chocolate chips. A staple in any baking cupboard. Yes, they’re high in saturated fat. THEY’RE ALSO CHOCOLATE CHIPS. I don’t think anyone is adding chocolate chips into their banana bread under the impression they’re a health food. They’re delicious, I use them in moderation, and the label makes me a bit… sad.
Juice IS very high in sugar and doesn’t have the beneficial fibre you’d get from eating whole fruit. I know this.
In general, we rarely have juice in the house, but it’s delicious as an occasional treat. I also love having shelf-stable juice on hand in case a child gets sick. Clear juice usually tastes a lot better to them when they’re not feeling well—and it gets calories and fluids into them! It also has vitamins.
This particular juice has no added sugar, so the sugar is coming from the fruit itself. Does that mean the sugar doesn’t count? Of course not. But I think context matters. (See above: corn syrup doesn’t require a HIGH IN SUGAR warning. Nor does dried, unsweetened fruit. Do you know how easy it is to eat an insane amount of dried mango? SO EASY.)
Next up: taco shells.
Salt is one of the ingredients… but there are FOUR ingredients total. Corn flour, oil, salt, and lime. You can’t get much simpler than that. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this information. Not eat tacos? Hunt for a lower-sodium shell? Eat the taco and feel vaguely guilty about it?
Then we have unsweetened coconut.
I buy this primarily for energy balls which, ironically, would qualify for both saturated fat AND sugar warnings.
But this is unsweetened coconut. The saturated fat isn’t coming from some mysterious additive, it’s naturally present. (And here’s an odd wrinkle: coconut oil sold in a bottle is fully exempt from the warning.)
The label isn’t wrong. Coconut IS high in saturated fat. I just wonder how much nuance gets lost when a bag of unsweetened coconut and a package of cookies can end up displaying the same basic warning.
Soy sauce is very high in sodium. No argument from me there.
But I’m also not taking a swig straight from the bottle.
We add a splash to sauces or dilute it with a bit with water and dip sushi into it. A single bottle lasts our family many months.
Could I buy a lower-sodium version? Sure. But once again, the way I consume the product feels like useful context that a big warning symbol can’t provide.
And finally, M&Ms.
Indy had a birthday party to go to last weekend and I wanted a little item to include with a card and some money. He opted to pick out a small bag of M&Ms.
(Somehow it doesn’t seem quite as festive to hand a birthday tween a bag of apples. I checked: no high-sugar warning labels on those!)
Do M&Ms contain lots of sugar and saturated fat? YES. Are they something I consider an everyday health food? NO.
But it’s also a small bag of candy being given to a kid on his birthday. And I think this example gets at my discomfort with the labels.
I understand—and appreciate—the goal. If I’m standing in the grocery store comparing two similar products, having an obvious warning that one contains substantially more sodium could be genuinely helpful.
But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
There’s a difference between eating something occasionally and eating it every day. There’s a difference between using two teaspoons of soy sauce in a recipe and drinking half a cup. There’s a difference between the saturated fat naturally present in coconut and eating a steady diet of highly processed foods. Sometimes… you just want to give someone a bag of M&Ms for their birthday!!!!
Also—and perhaps this is my own history with disordered eating talking—I don’t love the moral weight these labels can give food. I spent enough years thinking of foods as “good” and “bad,” and I can imagine that for some people, a large warning symbol on the front of a package could reinforce that sort of thinking. I don’t want to feel guilty because I bought chocolate chips. They’re chocolate chips! I eat them! I enjoy them!
Now, let’s discuss…
Your turn.
- Tell me your thoughts!
- If you live outside Canada, does your country have anything similar?
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I can see both sides of this! Having clear warnings when comparing similar products makes sense, but context matters enormously. If I buy a jar of honey, I know I’m buying a lot of sugar, but it will take us months to get through it!
In Switzerland, we have Nutri-Score, a colour-coded A-to-E rating, but it’s voluntary and seems to be becoming less common here. Of course, if you want to know what’s in a product, you can always check the nutrition information on the packaging.
I also relate to what you say about the moral weight we attach to food. Food choices are personal, and we all make our own decisions based on what works for us. There should always be room for enjoyment, too!
I noticed the Nutri-score when we were in Europe (various places used it). I didn’t realize it was voluntary, but did notice it wasn’t on all products.
This would irritate me, and then I’d promptly stop seeing them. It’s like when gluten-free became trendy, and they’d have labels “gluten-free” on bacon or butter. And this is worse because it’s mandated. Idea that sounds good but stupid in practice.
In theUS, there are warnings about the top allergens , which I appreciate, but nothing so OTT.
As a person with Celiac with a Celiac daughter, I am so thankful for the GF labels. While wheat is a top allergen and required to be listed in the back label, gluten technically isn’t. Wheat is only one part of gluten (also in barley and rye which pops up in food as additives more than you’d think). So the GF labels are immensely helpful in our daily life especially for my 7 year old daughter reading and diciphering labels. Not all GF is trendy!
I had no idea about the distinction between wheat as an allergen and gluten not. Wow!
I can imagine the GF labelling is a huge help, especially for a young person navigating an allergy while also gaining autonomy in reading and choosing foods.
I have a daughter who is gluten intolerant, so I do read the labels too. It’s the large banners on things that would never have gluten in them to begin with is OTT. Right now,, GF isnt as trendy as much though- every thing is now Protein!
I do mostly “stop seeing” them.
The allergen alert makes so much sense! Especially since sometimes things like mustard and soy can be hidden in unexpected places.
We have had those labels for a while here in the UK on most things and I have just stopped looking and seeing them. I think they are a little stupid when you buy something you know is full of sugar or salt, I think they were only created for stupid people. lol
I didn’t notice them when we were in the UK! Maybe like you say, I had stopped seeing them?!
FWIW sodium is not something everyone even needs to avoid. Sure some people are salt sensitive. Eating a lot of sodium raises their blood pressure, but that isn’t actually true for everyone! I guess what I am getting at (I say this as endocrinologist with a lot of nutrition training) is that the labels suggest that everyone needs the same diet — that a food that is bad for one person is bad for everyone — and that simply isn’t true. That may be part of what is bothering you. It certainly bothers me. There is already so much misinformation about nutrition out there. This isn’t exactly misinformation–it is true that juice is high in sugar for example–but it can certainly easily be misapplied.
Interesting point and, yes, everyone needs sodium in their diet (in varying amounts; I know an amateur athlete that has to be very careful to get enough sodium in their diet, ditto a family member with very low blood pressure… their doctor literally instructed them to add more salt to their food).
100% agree it’s not misinformation, I guess it’s the sweeping generalizations people might make based on generic labels?
Oof, these new labels have lost the plot. Out of curiosity, are there similar warning labels on fast food products? Or on restaurant menus?
Too silly.
Nothing like this on restaurant menus usually, but fast food does have to give calorie totals (I don’t think there are warnings, per se, but they’ll say the total calorie count and then there will usually be an asterisk and what a recommended total is for an adult female/male…).
You are coming at this as someone with a good amount of knowledge that not everyone has. I think the food labels can be helpful especially for foods that people may not have known that those foods contain higher amounts of sodium, fat or sugar. Growing up we had juice constantly- my parents thought it was healthy because it was fruit. And as you say, it’s not an issue to have sugar in moderation, but it never occurred to them how much sugar we were consuming. Maybe it would have changed our habits or maybe not, but at least they would have been informed
This is a fascinating and very helpful perspective! Some things (like the juice example) aren’t necessarily intuitive! Fruit is so widely considered healthy, but there is a very high sugar content, concentrated in juice which doesn’t have some of the other benefits of consuming raw fruit.
I don’t notice the labels anymore, just like my mother and mother-in-law probably don’t notice the REALLY GROSS photos on their cigarette packages. Food can be so fraught and it’s an excellent point about food insecurity. Something that made me laugh – this was years ago, and it might have been in the States – I saw a bag of sugar that was labelled “fat-free.” Which is certainly true.
I am NOT a fan of the moral value we place on food. In my circle, it’s pretty common to hear about “being bad” or “eating clean” in terms of food and I have to bite my tongue every time. This is one of the “do you want to be right or do you want to have friends” kind of thing, and I really don’t want to be a tiresome bore. But good grief, it’s okay to have the occasional treat.
“Clean eating” is a rough topic for me. I spent… years trying VERY hard to fall into this category and I could talk about “cheats” or “treats” and was obsessing about what went into my body in truly unhealthy/unsustainable ways.
Food is food. I consume it and while certain foods objectively make me feel better/worse, there is no good or bad food. When I eat intuitively, I naturally incorporate treats when I want them, but the craving tends to be gone because there’s not forbidden or off limits. They’re just part of my diet. I WANT salads because they’re delicious, not because they’re “good.”
I know we have a lot of overlap in this area and see eye to eye.
Also: sugar being fat-free. eye roll
Yeah, would annoy me some too I think. Like others have said, I can see both sides. On the one hand, I can see the benefits to nutritional labeling – for example for someone who has a medical reason to avoid high sodium, the label could make their life easier in certain cases. (Though I suspect many/most people with a true medical need are probably checking the actual nutrition labels anyway..). I also think the labels are unlikely to make a huge difference for many other people, because as you pointed out, if you’re downing M&ms I’m pretty sure you already know they aren’t a low calorie/low sugar food… They have those labels in Mexico and I remember laughing once as I drank my Coke with a big “excess sugar/excess calories” label on it… yep thanks for the reminder, still want it!! lol.
I will say that I was also annoyed when they started putting calorie labels on restaurant menus here (I don’t see that everywhere but in many places I do) and I’ll admit that it DOES sometimes impact my choices. Like if I think, oh that bacon pepper Jack burger sounds good .. and then I’ll see it’s like, 950 calories omg 😆 and might opt for the grilled chicken wrap instead! (Or..not, depends on the day… ;))
I don’t regularly buy pop but I’m assuming it has that label… I wonder if every can in a pack would have it though???
It can be truly alarming how many calories are packed into restaurant meals!! I remember seeing somewhere the highest density calorie item at Tim Hortons was a special peanut butter, chocolate shake. It was like the equivalent of eating a whole package of bacon, I think. Eeks!
I find it so interesting that those front of package labels are just for saturated fat, sodium, and sugar. Personally, I’m more worried about aspartame and other food chemicals than any of those three. It seems awfully specific. I wonder if there’s a degree of lobbyists involved? (Or maybe things are different in Canada? In the US, the lobbyists for food companies are huge.)
Sometimes I feel like the priorities for how tax dollars are spent are off. Like a government spending money on low hanging fruit legislation (like who is going to argue that people should ear more healthily?), vs working on more systematic problems.
Also – maybe the real solution is better education in health class? I remember learning about certain things in health class that has stuck with me and affected my behavior more so than a label on a food.
I suppose they had to narrow their focus somewhere, but it is definitely arbitrary, in a way. I’m bothered by sulfites, and those end up in a lot of packaged things 🙁
PREACH IT, SISTER! I despise the Nanny State.
When someone talks about “eating healthy”, I respond “‘Healthy” according to whose standards?”
Remember when butter, eggs, and bacon were going to kill us, and oat bran was going to save all our lives? Or when coffee was going to kill us all/save our lives and now we learn it’s all moldy*?? Or when protein and fat were bad so we all overloaded on carbohydrates, with bonus points for whole wheat or brown rice? How about vegetable oil being The Answer, and now we know it is made of those dreaded seed oils (RBD**), which will kill us all? All those people patting themselves on the back for using sea salt are missing out on iodine, and my local doctor is seeing many patients with goiters as a result. On and on and on it goes…
Exhausting. Just learn about your body, eat real food that works for you, and shut up about it.
But I’m perfectly neutral on the topic, as you can see.
*from The Culture Apothecary podcast
**Refined, bleached, deodorized
Ha. I definitely have no desire to preach and I can see both sides of the equation. But I do think it’s a bit complicated and not a black/white issue (and certainly would impact different people in different ways… no doubt positively for some, and not positively for others).
Coffee CONSTANTLY goes back and forth on the list of positive/negative. And eggs. For YEARS they were supposed to be the worst thing possible for cholesterol, and now in moderation they can be recommended.
I am viewing this through the lens of a parents and I will say that having conversations about food and its nutritional value is a very loaded topic/difficult for me to navigate at times. Like Paul is very underweight and we are trying to cram calories in him. But he will sometimes ask how many grams of fat is in X food. I know some of it is curiosity but I want to say – it literally does not matter for you and we are trying to get MORE fat into your little body. We talk about the importance of a balance diet but I don’t want them focusing on how many grams of fat are in this food versus that food because it is a slippery slope IMO. I was a very underweight child but I thought I needed to be on a diet because my mom was often on a diet/ate differently than me. So I am really careful when talking about food/nutritional content. And at 8 and 5, my boys are too young to be focusing on the calories/sugar/fat content of what they consume. That said, they don’t see many labels since they don’t grocery shop with Phil and they aren’t involved in meal prep. So they’d be oblivious to those warnings – at least at this point of their lives.
It’s tough because the labels can benefit some areas of the population and can be detrimental to other areas of the population. I can see the benefits and demerits of the labeling.
“It’s tough because the labels can benefit some areas of the population and can be detrimental to other areas of the population. I can see the benefits and demerits of the labeling.”
THIS! Yes. It’s going to be positive for some and negative for others. I suppose that’s true in a lot of areas of life, but food just seems like such a fraught, complicated, and literally unavoidable topic.
Honestly- this seems kind of stupid! I think people are just going to stop noticing these labels at all because they’re so silly. Of course soy sauce is salty! Of course candy has sugar! No one is saying these things are health foods! (Well-I’m one of those people who have low blood pressure and was advised to eat more salt, so there’s that.) I just can’t imagine someone saying “What? Chocolate has SUGAR??? I’m going to stop eating it right away!” It seems like there was a better way to spend tax dollars than on these labels. I’m not even sure what kind of labels we have on foods here, because I always ignore them. This seems like something the US would do though.
Yup, I know a few people that have been instructed by their doctor to increase salt intake.
“I’m not even sure what kind of labels we have on foods here, because I always ignore them.” I did laugh at this, Jenny!
I haven’t seen those labels here, or else I just haven’t been paying attention. Funny they would let us know a product is high in sugar or sodium, but hide the fact that food has been lab grown (and imo is not even really food) behind the label “cultured” or “cell based” meat.
A very fair point! It definitely seems like more of an art than a science…
The new labeling requirements would explain why I’ve noticed these on more and more foods… i always wonder why this is approached from the negative angle of warning about fat/sugar/sodium instead of focusing on the beneficial things in food like “high in calcium”, “high in fiber”, “high in vitamins “ etc. A lot of foods do have manufacturer added small labels saying that but if we’re doing a mandated labeling system let’s focus on what we should choose instead of avoid! (Caveat to this that I don’t think food is bad or good! But rather that if we’re doing labeled things in terms of nutritional content in a positive way as in choose this for high calcium versus watch out this is high in sodium, it would be better.)
Agree! I would love to have a more official (though how regulated are any of these things, I wonder) label for things like fiber!! Really appreciate your reframe about highlighting what things to encourage, not things to avoid.
Yes and amen to food not being “bad”!!!
I’m used to these labels as I winter in Mexico and they have them there. So oddly I didn’t even notice them in Canada. I already know how to eat most of th time and when I want a treat I don’t worry about the sugar or fat content. There are a lot of great comments here but one I haven’t seen mentioned is my pet peeve: “all natural” is a claim that is completely unregulated and drives me crazy. If it’s processed it’s not natural.
YES! All natural can be a huge misnomer. Really, so much about labelling feels like the “wild west” and semantics.
I had NO CLUE this was a thing now! Nope, I’ve not seen this until you brought it to my attention.
I do wonder who they’re targeting with this, because most consumers know the benefits (or NOT) of most foods, right?
Kind of on/off topic. We have restaurants in town that show the calorie content on their menus, and for me, that is a game-changer. Sometimes the thing I was going to order was outrageous in terms of calories, and it will sway me to make a better choice. I know that’s not the same thing, just came to mind for me.
Oh, and I’m with Pat above—so sick of things saying Natural Flavoring, when it’s not natural at all!
It can be VERY eye-opening to see the calorie count on something!
I think the rationale behind these labels makes the assumption that knowing exactly what’s in food will make people healthier. This assumption has some truth in it, but ignores so many major contributors to the way real people actually function around food. Money, culture, body image and access to cooking knowledge all make such a big difference. These labels feel very diet-culture-y to me, which I think is not ultimately a good thing for people over all.
Yes, yes, and yes to all of this!
I do think for some people it will be very positive and helpful, but somehow my gut tells me it will be a net negative?