Burkey Belser, Designer of Ubiquitous Nutrition Facts Label, Dies At 76 (washingtonpost.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Burkey Belser, a graphic designer who created the ubiquitous nutrition facts label -- a stark rectangle listing calories, fat, sodium and other content information -- that adorns the packaging of nearly every digestible product in grocery stores, died Sept. 25 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 76. The cause was bladder cancer, said his wife Donna Greenfield, with whom he founded the Washington, D.C., design firm Greenfield/Belser.
Mr. Belser's nutrition facts label -- rendered in bold and light Helvetica type -- was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Although some products had previously included nutritional information, there was no set standard, and the information was of little public health value in helping consumers make better food choices. The new law, drafted as obesity and other diet-related illnesses were surging, required mandatory food labels with nutrients presented in the context of a healthy 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.
Writing in a journal published by the Professional Association for Design, Massimo Vignelli, the renowned Italian designer, called Mr. Belser's creation a "clean testimonial of civilization, a statement of social responsibility, and a masterpiece of graphic design." The Food and Drug Administration chose Mr. Belser to design the nutrition label following his success creating the black and yellow energy guide label for appliances. Once dubbed the "Steve Jobs of information design," Mr. Belser's fondness for exceedingly simple design perfectly suited him for a job that required stripping down nutritional facts to the bare essentials. The report proceeds to tell the tale of how Mr. Belser worked pro bono with his team to labor through three dozen iterations of the label, ultimately settling on "simplicity in itself."
"There's a harmony about it, and the presentation has no extraneous components to it," Belser told The Washington Post. "The words are left and right justified, which gave it a kind of balance. There was no grammatical punctuation like commas or periods or parentheses that would slow the reader down."
He compared the finished product -- which he later adapted to over-the-counter drugs -- to the Apple iPod. "The detail is so important that you wouldn't even notice it and if you didn't notice it's a sign that it succeeded," he said. "I don't know if anybody's heart beats faster when they see nutrition facts, but they sense a pleasure that they get the information they need."
Mr. Belser's nutrition facts label -- rendered in bold and light Helvetica type -- was celebrated as a triumph of public health and graphic design when it debuted in 1994 following passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act. Although some products had previously included nutritional information, there was no set standard, and the information was of little public health value in helping consumers make better food choices. The new law, drafted as obesity and other diet-related illnesses were surging, required mandatory food labels with nutrients presented in the context of a healthy 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.
Writing in a journal published by the Professional Association for Design, Massimo Vignelli, the renowned Italian designer, called Mr. Belser's creation a "clean testimonial of civilization, a statement of social responsibility, and a masterpiece of graphic design." The Food and Drug Administration chose Mr. Belser to design the nutrition label following his success creating the black and yellow energy guide label for appliances. Once dubbed the "Steve Jobs of information design," Mr. Belser's fondness for exceedingly simple design perfectly suited him for a job that required stripping down nutritional facts to the bare essentials. The report proceeds to tell the tale of how Mr. Belser worked pro bono with his team to labor through three dozen iterations of the label, ultimately settling on "simplicity in itself."
"There's a harmony about it, and the presentation has no extraneous components to it," Belser told The Washington Post. "The words are left and right justified, which gave it a kind of balance. There was no grammatical punctuation like commas or periods or parentheses that would slow the reader down."
He compared the finished product -- which he later adapted to over-the-counter drugs -- to the Apple iPod. "The detail is so important that you wouldn't even notice it and if you didn't notice it's a sign that it succeeded," he said. "I don't know if anybody's heart beats faster when they see nutrition facts, but they sense a pleasure that they get the information they need."
EnergyGuide (Score:4, Informative)
He designed the EnergyGuide label prior to that. I guess he stuck to doing energy related stuff. I mean, calories is energy.
Re: EnergyGuide (Score:3, Informative)
The energy/nutrition stuff only represents a tiny fraction of Belserâ(TM)s work. Most of his work was branding and advertising for law firms. Greenfield-Belser, his design agency, was the first to specialize in legal industry clients. For a long time it was one of a few American law firms that would work with lawyers at all, lawyers are notoriously awful to design for.
Re: EnergyGuide (Score:4, Informative)
Lawyers are so bad that even lawyers avoid them!
(From context, I expect you meant to say "one of a few American design firms...")
Net (Score:3)
Presumably, given the awful net results, one would have to claim that, sans labels, Americans would be even fatter.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You, it would seem, have a habit, of talking like the famous actor, William Shatner.
Re: (Score:2)
[Most of] the nutrition labels are willfully misleading, while a few of them now show the nutrition facts for the whole package, most of them are still showing just the bullshit "serving size" which typically has no relation to reality. That's not the label's fault really, it's the manufacturers'.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, reading comprehension isn't what it used to be among the young folks. And since /. doesn't have emojis, they don't know how to express themselves properly here, so when us old folks croak, there isn't much coming after.
Re: man slashdot traffic is way down (Score:3)
Re:man slashdot traffic is way down (Score:4, Interesting)
What happened?
DICE and then B!zx happened. They successively degraded the site with ever-worse editing and by turning this place into a lovefest for cryptocurrencies and Elon. They will still accept stories critical of crypto occasionally, but they won't take any that point out the flaws in Elon or his ventures unless they can count on a groundswell of support for him. For example, the stories about Starlink interfering with astronomy still regularly make it through the firehose, as they know that plenty of people will chime in to defend it.
It's not great compared to other countries (Score:5, Informative)
The big loophole with the "nutrition facts" label is that it is per serving. So businesses that make unhealthy food can game the stats by tweaking the serving size. So we see things like cans of soft drink that contain 2.5 serving. Does anyone buy a can of soda, drink 40% of the can, then put it aside for later and drink it flat?
In many other countries, foods also need to have their calories and macronutrients per 100g of the food. So a a 100g (about 3oz) bag of chips (crisps to the Brits!) has a nutrition label that lists its contents per serving AND per 100g. So you can compare different-sized packets without busting out a calculator.
American version: https://awgsalesservices.com/w... [awgsalesservices.com] .au: https://salt-matters.org/wp/wp... [salt-matters.org]
UK: https://aunty-lils.co.uk/wp-co... [aunty-lils.co.uk]
Re:It's not great compared to other countries (Score:5, Funny)
And here I thought the serving was 2.5 cans!
Re: (Score:2)
Many modern labels contain nutrition info per serving and per package/container.
Re: (Score:2)
So businesses that make unhealthy food can game the stats by tweaking the serving size.
It gets worse than that. It's a race to the bottom as primary facts customers look for like calorie count will always look better with a smaller serving size so if you want to compete you need to use the same baby sized serving size or go smaller so your product doesn't look bad in comparison. In other words, as we do it here in the US honest food makers would lose business if they used realistic serving sizes as their product wouldn't compare well otherwise.
Re: (Score:3)
Does anyone buy a can of soda, drink 40% of the can, then put it aside for later and drink it flat?
No, obviously. However the design of the label contains the number of servings per container, so it's not like it's hard to figure out what you're consuming.
The data is only useful to people who *want* to understand it. Just like any data really.
Re: (Score:2)
However the design of the label contains the number of servings per container, so it's not like it's hard to figure out what you're consuming.
Sure, but this still makes it hard to compare two products in differently sized packages. And I know this is Slashdot, where we probably have a higher average standard of numeracy than the typical grocery shopper.
But this shouldn't be detective work. We should be making it easier for normal shoppers to find and buy healthy food. If that slightly reduces the profits of General Mills and Unilever, I propose that's OK too.
Re: (Score:2)
stick a label on the coffin (Score:3)
i wonder what his nutritional value was
His gravestone (Score:3)
Ultimately pointless (Score:2)
People are still going to eat whatever they want to. The unintended consequence has been yet another legal gravy train. Unchecked trial lawsuits have resulted in these labels becoming a CYA document. At some point, there's going to have to be so much information on them that there will be a little booklet attached to the product like you see on garden pesticide bottles. People won't read them and later claim that they were duped and therefore deserve millions of dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately, that is not true. For example, people replaced unsaturated fat with carbs, most likely a bad tradeoff.
too bad the data is bogus (Score:2)
Nice design. So what? The data is bogus. FDA is the only "science-based" entity that allows zero significant figures of data, and where 0.5 is rounded to "0".