iblog

The Government announced its plans for a “traffic-light” scheme of food labeling back in March last year. The idea is to simplify nutritional content labels in order to assist rushed shoppers in selecting the healthiest options. Foods labeled green can be eaten often; amber less often; and foods with a red label should be avoided except for the occasional treat.

All very well. The problem, of course, lies in determining which foods deserve which labels. The current system, adopted by Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, includes four coloured labels which relate to the levels of fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar.

Whilst the majority of these labels concur with conventional healthy eating advice and common sense, such a reductive system fails to take into account other factors, such as general nutritional content and the level of processing involved in food production. This results in a ridiculous scenario which sees highly processed McCain Oven Chips given 4 green lights and therefore an “eat often” blessing from the Food Standards Agency, whilst cheese is labeled as something to avoid as it is high in fat and saturated fat – ignoring the fact that it is not intended to be eaten in large quantities and contains many positive nutrients such as calcium and protein.
With so much conflicting nutritional advice floating around the media, is this system really helping people to make healthier choices?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 13th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.