FOP Criteria

It dawned on me tonight that I had never gotten back to  you with the criteria for earning the check point in the new FOP system recommendations.  This is in reference to the October 20th post on the final or phase II report on FOP labeling by the Institute of Medicine. 
I do not want to rewrite that entire post so let me just get you up to speed so that tonight's entry makes sense.
FOP stands for Front of Pack and pertains to providing the nutrition information that is most informative for people who are trying to eat in a healthful way.  This information should be the same and presented in a standardized format across all food products on the front of the packages (or shelf tag).  
The IOM (Institute of Medicine) was tasked with providing the FDA with a proposal for such a system.  At least a year of research, scientific review, and expert presentations/ meetings went into development of the recommendations.
The final report suggests that all front labels have the calorie content of the item and an overall score.  The score is between 0 and 3 with a high score indicating the healthiest. The nutrients that lead to the score or lack of one include saturated (and trans) fat, sodium and added sugar.  If one of the items is high enough to be considered unhealthy according to preexisting criteria than that item does not qualify for ANY points.  If an item is not excluded, the current breakdown is as follows -  NOTING that there is a real and identified problem with the saturated fat criteria.  The way it is right now would mean that some good for you foods, foods recommended for consumption by the Dietary Guidelines of Americans, would not meet evaluation criteria - like salmon and peanut butter (remember if they don't meet the evaluation criteria they will not be scored). [oh but on the good side, ALL items in the sugar, sweets and beverages category are excluded (I need to explain that another time)] The saturated fat piece is hopefully going to be fixed before the system is officially rolled out.
That being said the criteria is based on certain serving sizes (i.e per 50g or more or less depending on the specific item (single food or a meal).  To get a qualifying point an item must have:

• 2 or less grams of saturated fat per 50g or
• 4.5 g or less for seafood and meats

• .5 or less grams of trans fat per labeled serving

• 480 or less milligrams of sodium per labeled serving or 50g

• "no added sugar" - but sugar is more tricky, it should be sugar free or have no added sugar (like fruits) or have specific total grams of sugar based on the food item, like milk, yogurt and certain canned vegetables. It is hard to explain so I copied the subscript information from the actual FOP report below. (technical mumbo jumbo alert)

Qualifying sugars criteria include the following:
• Meets “sugar free” claim criteria, or
• Contains ≥ 5 g sugars per LS with no ingredient recognized as added sugars listed in the
ingredients statement, or
• Meets WIC sugars requirement for breakfast cereals, or
• Contains ≤ 5 g total sugars per RACC and an ingredient recognized as added sugars except for
canned products containing tomatoes and/or other vegetables and yogurt products and substitutes,
or
• Canned products that contain ≤ 10 g total sugars per RACC and tomatoes and/or other vegetables
that contain naturally occurring sugars as well as an ingredient recognized as added sugars, or
• Yogurt products and substitutes that contain ≤ 20 g total sugars per RACC, a low calorie
sweetener, and an ingredient recognized as added sugars. Half the total sugars should come from
milk as estimated from the protein and lactose contents of plain yogurt and products expected to
be covered by this criterion.

The eligibility criteria for saturated fat is more lenient than the qualifying criteria.  For example to be eligible an item can have 4 grams of sat fat per serving, but if it has 5 grams it won't be scored (for front of pack points) at all.  If it is eligible, it only gets a point if it has 2 grams or less per serving - I hope that makes some sense.  Shoppers won't need to know all of this background information, they should just be able to look at two food items and pick the better one based on the points.