The Food and Drug Administration formally proposed on Friday that companies be required to list the amount of added sugar they use and list it as a percent of recommended daily calorie intake on food labels.
This would mean that instead of listing a product as having 65 grams of added sugar, companies would be required to list that those 65 grams are actually 130 percent of the recommended daily intake. This would reveal to the consumer that the one product they're using already possesses more sugar than they should be ingesting in a single day.
In March 2014, the FDA proposed updating the Nutrition Facts label to include added sugars, but it did not require companies to declare the amount of sugar as a percentage, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The percent value would be added based on a recommendation made in February, from the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, that stated that the daily intake of calories from sugars not exceed 10 percent of total calories.
"The percent daily value shows how much a nutrient in a food contributes to a daily diet and would help consumers make informed choices for themselves and their families," the agency said in a statement, according to Fox News.
The FDA will bring the new proposal to be discussed publicly for 75 days, and the agency says it "will consider comments on the original and this supplemental proposed rule before issuing a final rule," according to NPR.
The agency expects to hear from food companies about their latest proposal. The Sugar Association has already chimed in, questioning whether the move to limit added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily calories is supported by legitimate science.
