New York State considers bills targeting added sugar, sodium, junk food marketing
New York City enacted the nation’s first law requiring chain restaurants to display added sugar warning labels last October and has mandated sodium warning labels since 2015. Now lawmakers at the state level are considering similar bills, along with a bill restricting junk food marketing to children.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Mary Bassett, who oversaw the rollout of the city’s sodium warning labels as health commissioner, spoke on the April 14 episode of WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show about why she thinks these bills are important for the health of New Yorkers.
Bassett, professor of the practice of health and human rights, noted that added sugar and sodium contribute to preventable health conditions including excess weight, diabetes, high blood pressure, and dental decay. There is some evidence that the sodium warning labels have helped reduce rates of high blood pressure, she said.
Ideally, having to display the labels will inspire companies to reformulate their recipes, Bassett said, but in the meantime, it’s important that consumers have information that can help guide their dietary decisions.
She added that the junk food marketing bill, which addresses tactics such as the use of cartoon characters or influencers to sell unhealthy products to kids, is ambitious and important. “It talks about how children are targeted not just on television and in stores, but on social media and encouraged to badger their parents for food,” she said. “It would empower the attorney general to take actions to protect children from marketing foods directly to them that aren’t good for them.”
Listen to the Brian Lehrer show segment: The Push for Junk Food Warning Labels in New York State
