Trans-Fat Labeling in Packaged Foods Sold in Brazil Before and After Changes in Regulatory Criteria for Trans-Fat-Free Claims on Food Labels
Brazil
Jun 08, 2022
In Brazil, there are specific requirements regulating the use of nutrition claims, which are defined as any representation that implies that a food product has specific nutritional properties. The 2003 regulation on nutrition claims was updated in 2012, when new conditions for application of nutrition claims on food labels were enacted. Some changes were related to TFA claims: the 2012 regulation states that manufacturers can label a product with the terms “zero trans,” “0% trans-fat,” or “does not contain trans-fat” if the food product contains less than or equal to 0.1 g of TFA per serving (whereas the limit of the 2003 regulation was 0.2 g), be it naturally occurring or i-TFA, provided that the sum of TFA and saturated fat does not exceed 1.5 g per serving. The regulation passed in 2019 does not change the parameters for TFA-free claims. For this reason, manufacturers will still be able to use TFA-free claims even when foods are sources of this type of fat, until TFA is completely banned.