New labels that clearly spell out a food product's nutritional value are already starting to show up on Canadian food market shelves. Food Canada has imposed new rules requiring consistent and detailed lists of fat, calories and nutrients on almost all packaged foods.

The new rules give customers "a much more complete food label than we've seen before," Toronto dietitian Fran Berkoff told CTV's Canada AM Thursday.

The new labels are bold, and easy to read. They list calories, total fat, saturated fat and trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fibre, sugars, protein, vitamins A and C and minerals calcium and iron. The percentage of the recommended daily intake of the core ingredients the food supplies will also be listed.

Almost all packaged foods will now carry the labels. Among the products exempted from the new regulations are raw meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, herbs and spices, beverages with more than 0.5-per-cent alcohol and food prepared in-store, such as bakery products.

Until now, nutrition labelling has been optional. The label did not look the same on all foods, and when present, it usually gave information on only a few nutrients.

In addition to standardizing labels, the new regulations also update the current requirements for nutrient content claims e.g. low in saturated fat, low sodium).

The regulations also allow manufacturers to make claims about how their products promote healthy choices -- something that had been prohibited until now.

For instance, a product that contains at least 200 milligrams of calcium per serving and meets a number of other requirements, can have a label that states: "A healthy diet with adequate calcium and vitamin D, and regular physical activity, help to achieve strong bones and may reduce the risk of osteoporosis."

The federal government hopes the new rules requiring mandatory nutrition labels on food products will save $5 billion in health-care costs over the next 20 years by helping Canadians trim their waistlines and reduce cancer, diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke.

So far, that hasn't been the case in the United States. There, similar mandatory labelling has been in place since 1994, but obesity is still a major problem.

"The Canadian situation at the present isn't the same as the American situation," responds Health Canada spokeswoman Karen Dodds.. "We do eat different food in Canada. We have different availability."

Dr. Tom Wolever, a nutrition expert at the University of Toronto, is not pleased with the new rules. He says labels packed with information can confuse and discourage consumers.

"I think a nutrition label is a fairly complicated thing," he said. "There are a lot of small pieces of information."

To overcome that, Health Canada will accompany the new labels with a comprehensive public education campaign designed to change buying habits.

Manufacturers have three years to comply with the labelling guidelines, a changeover that's expected to cost $263 million.

With reports from The Canadian Press and CTV's Cortney Pasternak.