Nutrition: Vitamin Crackdown

For two generations, multiple-vitamin preparations of one form or another have been a familiar fixture on many an American breakfast table. Whether or not they are prescribed by a pediatrician, they almost always boast the kind of label that assures a cautious parent he is doing right by his child. The fine print spells out "Minimum Daily Requirements" in esoteric quantities such as milligrams, U.S.P. or international units, and the average uncertain layman usually decides that if a little is good, more is surely better. The business in vitamin and mineral supplements to the U.S. food budget has grown to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

17 Components. Six months from now, if Commissioner James L. Goddard of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has his way, many vitamins and fortified food items may disappear from the table, or appear only with more revealing labeling. The vast majority of Americans, says Dr. Goddard, get all the vitamins and minerals they need from an ordinary, varied diet. They need no supplements, and Goddard has called for new labeling to make that clear. For those who need special diet items—for obesity, for example, or diabetes or heart-and-kidney disease—new labeling will be allowed to make fewer claims and must be far more precise.

Though the FDA's notice to vitamin makers and food processors reads like another of "GoGo Goddard's" sweeping attacks, the decision had actually been in the works for four years. The Government-backed Food and Nutrition Board decided four years ago that the term "minimum daily requirement" was widely misunderstood and abused. In its place, it proposed "Recommended Dietary Allowances" of eleven vitamins and six minerals, and last week the FDA finally put those recommendations into practice.*In almost every case the allowances are well below the previous "requirements."

The FDA also served notice that it intends to:

> Restrict "low-calorie" labeling to foods containing 15 or fewer calories per serving.

> Limit "reduced in calorie" claims to foods containing 50% fewer calories than their natural equivalent.

>Regulate the added nutrients and the amounts of each that may be used in fortified foods such as enriched bread, cereals and milk products.

Basic Needs. Vitamin-and mineral-fortified foods will have to adhere strictly to the rules. They must not be promoted in any way as effective for the treatment or prevention of any disease; also outlawed from now on is any sales pitch depending on the argument that ordinary foods will not supply adequate nutrition, or that much of the U.S. population is suffering from vitamin or mineral deficiencies.

"Some families in economically depressed areas," Dr. Goddard conceded, "do not have a varied or plentiful supply of foods, even though their diet seems to provide basic nutritional needs." But even for them, he insisted, vitamin-mineral supplements are not the answer. He suggested instead food-distribution programs to provide a more varied diet.