The UK’s food labeling system, which uses traffic lights to indicate the healthiness of food products, has caused concern among olive oil producers as well as other members of the European food industry.
Some people believe that nutrition labels provide important dietary information for consumers to make healthy food choices. The title may be the sole source of nutrition information that is available to consumers at the time of purchase. It’s therefore important to make the information easy to read, understand and interpret.
More than 130 UK food businesses In the UK, there are four main formats, with many hybrids.
In the UK, there have been many studies that investigated consumers’ understanding of nutrition labels. The Food Standards Agency (FSA), in collaboration with industry and consumers, conducted a series of studies in 2009-10 to examine the standardization on the front of the packaging.
The key elements that consumers found important were:
The European Parliament supported a proposal in June 2010 for a more uniform food labeling system within the European Union. color coding system, opting instead for GDAs for front-of-pack nutrition labeling in line with the majority of current
We finally have an agreement in the UK. For the first time, the major retailers have worked with the FSA and Department of Health and come up with an agreed-upon front-of-package labeling system.
The GDAs are being replaced with reference intakes. Detailed industry-specific guidelines have also been developed, with specific limits for what can be considered low, medium, and high and different cutoff points for foods and beverages.
The UK food industry has been preparing for the move for a few years. They have been reformulating their products to be less in the “red zone,” for example, using salt substitutes and adding sugar substitutes in fizzy drinks.
With the amount of data that supermarkets already have about our shopping habits, they can’t wait to use data analytics from label information to guide us toward healthier choices.
It’s not always that simple. Olive oil is a good example. It’s considered healthy because of its high content of unsaturated fats. However, it would still have a warning label.
Other products, such as butter and cheese, would also be rated red. The guidance acknowledges this and states that products like nuts and oily salmon will also have a “red light” due to naturally occurring fats. These products should be labeled with the amount of saturated fatty acids to inform consumers of the fat balance and to highlight the benefits they offer.
It remains to be determined whether we will choose to distinguish between the different foods that are red-lighted. After all, we are humans.
