New food labels to be introduced next year
by Simon Ward | 24 October 2012 | 
9 comments
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Government says it has agreement from food industry for consistent labels showing fat, salt, sugar and calorie content.
The Government says a consistent system of labelling will be introduced on food packaging next year.
The exact design of the labels hasn’t yet been finalised but the proposed system will highlight guideline daily amounts, with colour coding and high/medium/low text showing the fat, saturated fat, salt, sugar and calorie content of food.
Although the system will be voluntary, Government ministers say the food industry is finally backing them after years of talks.
It has to be a voluntary system, as to make it compulsory would require Europe-wide legislation.
Some retailers – including Asda, the Co-op, M&S, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose – have already introduced traffic light and/or text highlighting the amount of salt, sugar and fat content in their foods.
Public Health Minister Anna Soubry said: “The UK already has the largest number of products with front of pack labels in Europe but research has shown that consumers get confused by the wide variety of labels used.”
The new labels are expected to be launched by next summer.
What do you think of the labels? Will they help us eat more healthily? Let us know in the Comments section below.
More on packaging and labelling
Best-before labels must be abolished!
Comments
by londonschild | on 27 October 2012
I am glad it will be a version of the traffic light system it does work which is why one suspects some supermarkets have resisted it. I think the most determined to eat unhealthily person may pause when they continually find their basket/trolley full of red labels but I hope they don't red label everything with fat, including 'good' fats, fat is a natural food group and we need it unlike processed sugar which is poison.
by davidinnotts | on 29 October 2012
You're right and wrong, londonschild. Fats are vital for our health, but only in small quantities. Healthy people (uncommon) absolutely must have some ALA and LA fatty acids (the polyunsaturates) for body building; otherwise a few ounces in total a day is all you need, of any kind of fat. But the reality for nearly all of us in the UK is that we eat far, far too much LA in cooking oils, yet struggle to get enough ALA; and our diet is so junky that we can't manufacture the 'brain food' fatty acids from ALA that we ought to be doing.
This is why we get those strong medical warnings to eat oily fish more than once a week. We should also heavily cut down on the LA-loaded cooking oils and on saturated fats, and find a source of ALA, which isn't easy. Probably the best start is to cook with rapeseed oil (usually just labelled 'vegetable oil') rather than sunflower, corn, peanut, safflower, grapeseed and soya oils. Olive oil is OK, but unlike rapeseed, has no ALA.
Refined sugars aren't poison. They're simply energy; but as we crave sugar, it needs willpower to eat only a little and avoid the sugar addiction that most people have.
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