FDA Launches 'Know Your Nutrition' for Women's Health Week. Label Literacy Becomes Public Policy
WELLNESS

FDA Launches 'Know Your Nutrition' for Women's Health Week. Label Literacy Becomes Public Policy

By Maya · · FDA Office of Women's Health
KO | EN

The FDA’s Office of Women’s Health (OWH) opened National Women’s Health Week on May 10 by launching ‘Know Your Nutrition,’ a public campaign that bundles life-stage nutrition guides, a label-reading webinar (May 13, noon ET), and the agency’s refreshed ‘healthy’ food claim into a single consumer hub. The argument the campaign makes is simple. Dietary choice belongs to women who can read a label, not to packaging copy.

The Campaign At A Glance

Organizer & dates:

  • FDA Office of Women’s Health, in partnership with the Human Foods Program
  • May 10 to 16, 2026 (National Women’s Health Week)
  • Centralized NWHW web hub, blog series, public webinar
  • Live webinar: May 13, 12:00 to 1:30 p.m. ET (how to read a nutrition label)

What’s in the guide:

  • Life-stage nutrition guides for adolescents, women in their reproductive years, and women past menopause
  • Label-decoding tools tied to the updated Nutrition Facts panel and the new ‘healthy’ claim
  • Tools to separate regulated claims from marketing copy

Disease targets:

  • Cardiovascular disease (still the leading cause of death in U.S. women)
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Diet-linked cancers, including breast and colorectal

Why The Refreshed ‘Healthy’ Claim Matters

In late 2024 the FDA updated the criteria for the word ‘healthy’ on packaged food, the first substantive revision in roughly three decades. The old rule focused on fat and cholesterol caps. The new one looks at food-group servings (grains, fruit, vegetables, dairy, protein) plus ceilings on added sugar, sodium, and saturated fat. ‘Know Your Nutrition’ is the consumer-facing layer that turns this regulatory shift into something a person can use in a grocery aisle.

In practice that means a shopper can now test whether a label that says ‘Heart Healthy’ or ‘Naturally Sweetened’ actually clears the FDA bar, rather than accepting the front-of-pack claim at face value.

Why It’s Women-Specific

Identical diets produce different outcomes by sex. Hormonal cycles, pregnancy, and the menopause transition all change the requirement curves for calcium, iron, folate, vitamin D, and omega-3s. The OWH leans on three points.

Life-stage awareness: A 15-year-old’s calcium need differs from a 35-year-old’s, and a 35-year-old’s folate need differs from a 55-year-old’s. The Dietary Reference Intakes are not a single number; they shift by age, sex, and pregnancy status.

Marketing literacy: ‘Plant-based,’ ‘Clean Label,’ and ‘Boost Immunity’ are unregulated marketing terms. None of them satisfy the FDA ‘healthy’ claim. The campaign tells women to look at the back-of-pack Nutrition Facts panel rather than the front-of-pack art.

Evidence base: The campaign references the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 alongside the updated FDA claim, so consumers see the same underlying numbers that clinicians use.

What Travels Beyond The U.S.

The campaign is U.S.-policy, but most of it ports cleanly to other markets. Korean nutrition labels track sodium, sugars, saturated fat, and trans fat under similar logic, though Korea has weaker guidance on what ‘healthy’ or ‘low sugar’ actually means on a front-of-pack badge.

Three rules from the U.S. campaign work everywhere.

Label-first: The protein bar that calls itself ‘plant-based’ on the front matters less than its protein, added sugar, and sodium on the back.

Realistic serving sizes: The refreshed U.S. claim redefined serving sizes to what people actually eat. If a 200 mL drink lists 100 mL as a serving, double every number on the label.

Claim vs. fact: ‘Boost Immunity’ on a packaged food is a marketing line. A regulated functional-food certification is a separate, narrower category. Without that certification, the implied effect is copy.

What To Watch — May 13 Webinar

The 12:00 p.m. ET webinar on May 13 (1:00 a.m. KST on May 14) is the campaign’s main asset. The session covers how to read a label in five minutes, applied cases for the refreshed ‘healthy’ claim, and a paired blog post titled Empowering Women to Make Informed Food Choices.

The larger argument is policy. Women’s dietary decisions are not single-meal choices; they accumulate across a lifespan, and the information needed to make those decisions should come from regulators rather than packaging design.

Source: FDA Office of Women's Health