The City of Melbourne Council has introduced a new Traffic light Nutritional Guideline system to food vendors at the food court at QV in Melbourne’s CBD to enable the public to make more informed choices about the nutritional value of foods without having to navigate any food labeling information.

The guidelines have been simplified into 3 colours, Red, Amber & Green which is universally understood by most people when referenced to traffic lights.

Red – less healthy choice

Nutritional value = Low
Saturated fat and/or sugar and/or salt = High
Kilojoules = High
Overall: Minimise/reduce consumption

Amber – ok choice, more about moderation

Caution to be exercised
Saturated fat and/or sugar and/or salt = Moderate
Kilojoules = High if consumed in large serving sizes
Nutritional value = Not significant enough to influence decision to purchase
Overall: Moderate consumption, foods are mainly processed

Green – The healthiest choice
Nutritional & Fibre value = High
Saturated fat and/or sugar and/or salt = Low
Kilojoules = Low
Overall: Aim to consume these when making decisions to buy

So far 9 Food Outlets have participated in this program that has been every menu item have been analysised subject to the accreditation process of Nutrition Australia.

This lead to some changes in the type of cooking oils used, substituting high fat diary products with low fat, leaner cuts of meat and introducing more fresh fruit & vegetables.

Check out the Melbourne City Council’s website for more info about the “Green Light, Eat Right” campaign

So overall definitely a move in the right direction by Melbourne City Council in introducing the traffic light nutritional guidelines.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 4:34 pm by Andrew Talati and is filed under News.

Tags: Guidelines, Healthy eating, Melbourne, Nutrition, Take away

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.