Food labelling & nutritional label

LABELLING

Labelling Confused by food labelling? Just want to be able to get an idea of what’s in the food without spending half an hour analysing the ingredients and nutritional label?

A number of systems have been introduced to try and help consumers get an idea of the fat, sugar and salt content of foods at a glance. This may be particularly useful when deciding which pizza, ready meal or snack to chose when you are in a hurry.

The Traffic Light Labelling System was introduced by the Food Standards Agency and uses red, amber or green to indicate the nutritional content of the food.

• Red means the food is high in fat, sugar or salt. These foods should only be eaten occasionally.

• Amber means the food has medium amounts of fat, sugar or salt so can be chosen most of the time.
• Green foods have low levels of fat, sugar and salt and so are the healthier choices.

The table below shows the traffic light labelling classifications:

Nutrient	Green	Amber	Red
Fat	Less than 3g per 100g	Between 3g and 20g per 100g	Greater than 20g per 100g or more than 21g of fat per portion
Saturated Fat	Less than 1.5g per 100g	Between 1.5g and 5g per 100g	Greater than 5g per 100g or more than 6g of fat per portion
Sugars	Less than 5g per 100g	Between 5g and 12.5g per 100g	Greater than 12.5g per 100g or more than 15g per portion
Salt	Less than 0.3g per 100g	Between 0.3g and 1.5g per 100g	Greater than 1.5g per 100g or more than 2.4g per portion

Fundamentally, the aim of the traffic light system is to allow people to quickly get an idea of the general “healthiness” of the product. It means if you choose mainly green labelled products, with occasional amber or red products your diet should be reasonably healthy. However not all food manufacturers and retailers use the traffic light labelling system. Instead they use GDAs (Guideline Daily Amounts).

GDAs compare the energy, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt content of a portion of the food to the total daily average amount for an adult.

They are based on the premise that an average adult would require:
2000 calories/ day
70g fat/ day
20g saturated fat/ day
24g of fibre/ day
6g of salt/ day
230g of carbohydrate/ day
90g of sugar/ day
50g of non-milk extrinsic sugar (NMES) or added sugar/ day

These figures are based on the average daily requirements for a moderately active woman aged between 19 to 50.

The guidelines for energy and sugar are an AVERAGE target.

The guidelines for fat, saturated fat, salt & NMES are MAXIMUM targets.

The guideline for fibre and carbohydrate are MINIMUM targets.

There is some debate about which system is best and there are benefits and problems with both.

For example:

Some foods are designed to be eaten in very small quantities e.g. spread on bread therefore it may be inappropriate to classify them according to their nutrient content per 100 gram.

Some of the food retailers/ manufacturers use unrealistic portion sizes. Have a look at cereal packs in particular and weigh out the portion size they suggest!

Some foods, e.g. nuts or avocadoes, are high in fat but they are rich in other nutrients and fibre. If comparing with a chocolate bar, a consumer may make the wrong decision and not consider the bigger picture.

The best advice is use the labels to compare foods in the supermarket. If you look carefully you will find some differences in content between 2 otherwise similar products. Unfortunately it does take a bit of time but both systems can certainly help speed up making the healthier choice. If you do look carefully at the labels you will be surprised by how often products advertised as healthier products are not actually any better than other versions.

Health Claims
Legislation has recently come into effect controlling the use of health claims. Manufacturers can no longer promote their products as benefiting health unless they have the evidence to support their claim. Claims like “helps aid digestion” or “increased endurance” need to backed up by results from appropriate studies. This is good news for consumers but it will take a while for food manufacturers to put the new legislation into effect so you still need to be aware that general claims like “superfood” currently appear without any specific proven benefit.