The Food and Drug Administration hopes to cut down on high rates of obesity and diabetes across the country by redesigning the labels that appear on food and drink. The changes are meant to highlight the amount of added sugar and calories in products. Beginning this summer, a new line on nutritional labels will show how many grams of added sugars have been put into the food beyond what was in it originally. The label will also tell consumers the percentage of the recommended daily amount of sugar. “The sugar thing is just absolutely huge,” said National Public Radio reporter Allison Aubrey. Currently, food labels do not give the percent daily value for sugar. If a person drinks a 20-ounce sugary soda containing 65 grams of sugar, they are consuming 16 teaspoons of sugar, Aubrey explained. The new labels will state that the soda product contains 130 percent of the daily recommended value. That’s more sugar in a single soft drink than a person should consume in one day. While Aubrey said she does not consider the changes to be very radical, they do reflect the many studies previously released saying excess sugar leads not only to weight gain but also to higher risk of heart disease.

FDA — the Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calories — a unit used to measure the amount of energy in food