About 60% of Americans are battling at least one chronic disease, and 40% are dealing with two major health issues, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

And many of those chronic conditions are caused or made worse by the high levels of saturated fat, added sugars and sodium contained in processed foods. So wouldn't it make sense to highlight some of these health risk factors on the front of food packaging?

That's what the FDA decided last week when the agency announced it was proposing new front-of-package labeling requirements to help reverse the current American obesity epidemic. It's an idea that Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has been pushing for more than a decade, and when I caught up with him by phone Friday he seemed enthusiastic that the FDA has finally given its approval to what seems like a common-sense way for people to quickly evaluate whether certain foods are promoting health or putting lives in danger.

"Consumers need to know right at the moment they start reading about the product what its nutritional values are," Blumenthal told me. "It's essential to know to make healthy choices."

The proposed Nutrition Facts labeling requirement would include information on the three biggest factors contributing to diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes: sugar, salt and saturated fats as a percentage of recommended maximums for daily consumption. It would also mark each of these areas as low, medium or high as a quick warning to people looking to limit their intake of these silent killers that are currently consumed in excessive quantities by the majority of Americans.

The FDA, in a recorded press conference found on its website, said one of the hopes of the labeling requirement is that consumer-product companies will reformulate some of the common foods that Americans eat to ensure that they come below the threshold to be labeled high in saturated fat, salt or added sugars. FDA officials said the new labeling system is backed by a substantial body of research.

Larger companies would have up to three years to adopt new packaging once the rule is finalized, while companies with less than $10 million in sales would have an extra year.

Blumenthal called the proposed label change "revolutionary," and said previous efforts to allow food producers to voluntarily exhibit front-of-package labeling was "woefully deficient."

"The food industry for a long time has hidden behind complicated labels," he said. "They need to come clean."

But Blumenthal acknowledged that the timing of the food-packaging proposal could have been better. By coming to light at the tail end of the Biden administration, he said there is a chance the incoming Trump team will put the kibosh on front-of-package labeling.

"I wish the rule had been done years ago," he said. "It would have made it more resilient to any kind of legal effort to roll it back."

In addition, Blumenthal has long expressed frustration with food purveyors labeling their products as "grass fed," "all natural" and "organic," which are often misleading at best. He wants to aim for more accurate and standardized labeling so consumers know what they are actually getting.

"All too often, the main goal of food companies is to profit through cost cutting and raising prices," he said. "Information for consumers is often obscure and misleading."

Many years ago, the federal government finally required warning labels on cigarettes after years of the industry successfully covering up links between smoking and lung cancer. It seems hard to argue against similar warning labels on highly processed foods that are risky for not just a small percentage of people, but for all of us.

Blumenthal said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the proposed head of the Department Health & Human Services, has said "some encouraging things about labeling," so he has hopes that the FDA rule might eventually be approved. But he's less sanguine about his labeling laws passing a Republican-controlled Senate. Still, he said the FDA's move indicates how popular the agency believes labeling changes will be.

"It's a consumer issue whose time has come," he said.

Lee Howard is The Day's business editor. To reach him, email l.howard@theday.com.