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Why doesn't NA beer have nutrition fact labels in the USA? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I understand that alcoholic beverages are regulated by the ATF and not the FDA, which is why nutrition fact labels aren't legally required on alcoholic beverages, but why does this carry over to NA beer?

It's basically just beer-flavored soda. It has less than the required alcohol content (<0.5%) to be legally classified as an alcoholic beverage. Is it not regulated by the FDA?

The only clue I have is that Nutrition Fact labels appear on cans of NA beer made by companies that only produce NA beer (e.g. Athletic / Partake), but not NA beers produced by existing full-alcohol breweries (e.g. Heineken / Guinness). Is there some sort of "we also produce alcoholic beverages" loophole to avoid FDA regulation?

If so, would it be possible for Coca-Cola, who distributes alcoholic beverages (e.g. Topo Chico hard seltzer / Jack & Coke premixed cocktails), to get around the requirement for their regular sodas?

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Brewery process engineer here. The reasons beer doesn't need as strict of regulation in terms of food safety and in terms of labeling is twofold.

Part of that is because it's lobbied to keep it that way, because if you put numbers down they're not great (no surprise)

Part of it is because beer's pH and alcohol content makes it nearly impossible for human-harming-pathogens to grow. On the scale of danger for you from a food safety perspective, beer is low.

NA beer is full strength beer with the alcohol removed. It goes through the same kill steps and processes as normal beer. Alcohol removal can be done a few ways (RO, filtration, boiling) but is I think always or effectively always followed by pasteurization.

Not saying it should be beyond labelling, but that's the reasoning why it's not a high priority for labeling like food.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The labeling referred to was nutritional, not food safety. Why would its inhospitability to pathogens mean we don't need nutritional labeling?

Now, you mentioned lobbying, which is a valid reason if not a good one. I also have no skin in this game, since beer is one of my least favorite alcohols.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

The (absolutely gutted) organization for requiring things like nutritional information is primarily responsible for keeping people safe in the foods they consume. Should it be on there? Probably. But on the scale of things to do it's so absurdly insanely low with so many horrific things ahead of it that it probably isn't gonna happen. Nevermind the fact that it's lobbied against pretty hard at the same time.

I think it probably should have nutritional and allergenic info required on it, but hearing the horror stories of my friends in food safety who go to plants that produce dangerous products with so little rules and oversight, I can't imagine thinking it's a good idea to take any amount of FDA time and attention away from that for things like beer.

Most big breweries have nutritional info on their site for their beers, fwiw.