The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday proposed requiring new nutrition labels on the front of food and beverage products, a long-awaited move aimed at changing eating habits associated with soaring rates of obesity and diet-related illness that are responsible for a million deaths each year.

The new label, a small black-and-white box similar to the Nutrition Facts box on the back of packaged goods, is designed to help consumers quickly understand which products contain excessive amounts of sugar, salt and saturated fat. Those nutrients are implicated in the high rates of Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

More than 60% of American adults suffer from those three chronic illnesses, which are estimated to account for $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs, according to the FDA.

In contrast to the mandatory back-of-package Nutrition Facts panels, the front-of-package labels would rank the contents of sugar, fat and salt as high, medium or low to indicate whether the amounts exceed or fall short of the recommended daily values set by the FDA.

— The New York Times