Nutrition labels added to raw meats beginning today, USDA says

How much fat and calories are in your ground beef? Beginning today, customers will be able to look at nutrition labels, the USDA announced.

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(CBS News) Some big changes are coming to raw meat and poultry products sold at grocery stores, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced today. Under a new rule that goes into effect March 1, packages of raw meat - whole, ground or chopped - will carry nutrition fact labels.

PICTURES: 10 Ways Meat Can Make You Sick

That means 40 of the most popular cuts of raw meat, such as chicken breasts, steaks or pork chops will have nutrition information. Buying meat from a butcher counter? There will likely be a nearby poster stating nutrition facts, the USDA said in a statement.

Dr. Elisabeth A. Hagen, Under Secretary for Food Safety at the USDA, told HealthPop that the labels will contain the same information people are used to seeing and typically look for, such as calories, fat content, and sodium. Under the new rule, a package of meat that says it's 85 percent lean will now say right next to it that it contains 15 percent fat.

Why is the USDA making this change now?

"This administration has had a really strong focus since the beginning on safe foods and expanding access to nutrition food for everybody," Hagen told HealthPop. "Consumers are more interested in what's in their food than they've ever been. We want to be supportive of that."

Hagen says people can use the new labels to guide their nutrition with the help of another USDA initiative, MyPlate. According to MyPlate, a lean protein should take up a quarter of a person's plate. Hagen says now people will be able to see how much lean protein they're actually getting.

"You can't make the best choices if you don't have the right information," Hagen says.

Some meat products already contain nutrition labels, such as prepackaged meats that contain additives like a marinade. The new changes will affect meats people typically purchase at grocery stores. Small businesses that grind meat and poultry are exempt from the rule, provided they provide lean and fat information and don't make other nutritional claims about the meat, such as "antibiotic-free."

Hagen said grocery stores and meat manufacturers have been receptive to the change since consumers are becoming savvier about their nutrition. The changes are expected to add about a half-penny per pound cost to the products, a cost that likely won't be noticed, Hagen said. The nutrition label rule was first announced in December 2010 according to the USDA, but did go into effect until  today to give manufacturers time to make the switch.

Got questions about the new nutrition labels for meats? Visit www.AskKaren.gov or call the toll-free USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 1-888-MPHotline.

11 Photos

10 Ways Meat Can Make You Sick

[JMJGatorfan16]

Goofer-Buddy - you are way off base. Please read the following from well respected food safety blog.

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/01/cleverly-manipulated-public-opinion-trumps-real-science-again/

[rayward73446]

What about adding other substances to the meat we eat, such as water. On hams during the processing water and curing agents are added, and the label indicates this, but in some big box stores all of the beef and pork cuts are also injected with water to raise the weight of the meat. This is the same thing as stealing from the consumer. When the meat is cooked the water evaporates, and the meat shrinks more than if water was not added to the product. I would like to know just how much water is being added to the cuts of meat we buy? The big box stores needs to stop ripping us off, and offer an unadulterated product.

[Nate650]

This is useless and will solve nothing. Emphasizing calorie and fat counts isn't the answer to the health crisis. I'd rather see how the animals were raised, where they were raised, what they were fed, how they were processed, and if they were administered antibiotics or hormones.

I'd rather know that a product contains high fructose corn syrup than how many calories it has because it allows me to gauge how processed the food is. If calories and fat counts were so important, all we had to do to eat healthy is eat less than a certain amount of calories per day, which clearly isn't the answer since all the calories can come from processed foods. We should focus more on quality than quantity.

[jd2408]

I want the country of origin on the labels including canned food. We have a right to know where our food is produced. Distributed by does not cut it and the labels on meat in our state showing NAFTA is not good enough.