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There’s been quite a bit of talk recently about changing the way food products are labelled in an attempt to educate and encourage people to make healthier food choices.

Governments around the world are considering (and in some cases have already implemented) systems that provide ‘traffic light’ nutrition labels on food.

The general idea is that every food product you buy would have a label on the front advising you of the fat, sugar and sodium levels in terms of good (green), okay (amber), and too high (red).

It sounds like a good idea. The question is, will it work?

Traffic Light Labels
The primary idea behind traffic light labelling is to make it easier for the general public to choose healthier food options without the need for a lot of education.

By adding colour-coded labels to food, people will instantly know whether or not their food falls into a good, okay or not good category.

It also allows Governments and health promotion agencies to focus their attention on promoting the system rather than the larger job of providing nutrition education.

The idea of colour-coded food labels is quite good. Foods are assessed on the levels of fat, salt and sugar. Levels of each determine the colour-code of each category.

For example, a food that receives the green light in each category can be eaten regularly. A product that gets the red light should be avoided or, at the very least, eaten only on occasion. Amber foods can be consumed in moderation as they are neither high nor low.

Traffic Light Criteria
The criterion for categorising food is based on the amounts of fat, sugar and salt per 100gm. The 100gm measurement has been used for many years now to help people compare food products. Most of us have used this system at some time have compared two or three products to find the better option based on the nutritional content.

In essence, traffic light labels take this idea one step further. Colour-coding  information on the front of the packet will make it so much easier to choose a healthier product.

The following table shows how the content of foods will be categorised:

Green Amber Red
Total fat per 100gm <3 gm 3.1-19.9gm >20gm
Saturated fat per 100gm < 5gm 5.1-14.9gm >15gm
Sugar per 100gm <5gm 5.1 -14.9gm >15gm
Sodium (salt) per 100gm 120mg 121-599mg >600mg

Iphone Application
The Cancer Council of Victoria have actually released an application for the iPhone that compensates for the lack of movement by the government. Just search the iTunes app store under “Traffic Light Labelling.”

The Pros and Cons
As with many things, the traffic light system has both good and bad points.

While the system will help easier identification of good and not so good nutritional foods, the system doesn’t differentiate between healthy and unhealthy foods.

For example, many breakfast cereals may be perceived as healthy, but using the traffic light system they’ll get a green light for saturated fat, amber for sodium and a red light for sugar.

In this instance these foods are unhealthy but no labelling identifies them as such. However, people do need to use common sense. Even though a product may have two ‘green lights’ and one red light,  consumers still need to understand that a high sugar content is inherently unhealthy.

As a health promotion exercise and an attempt to improve the obesity problem on both a national and international level, the traffic light system is a simple way to encourage us to be more conscious of the foods we choose.

As with many Government health initiatives, while the traffic light system may encourage people to be more selective about their food choices, there are those who will continue eat what they want regardless of its health impact.

Obesity is clearly an issue in the Western world. Anything that can be done to help improve the health and wellbeing of our population is always a good thing.

And while there may be some issues with traffic light labelling, encouraging people to choose healthier food options can and will have a positive impact on the health of our nation.

Written by Andrew Talati

Many say that, when it comes to choosing nutritious food for your children, it’s a parent’s responsibility to read the nutritional information on the box and make the right choice.

But, unless you’re a dietician, it’s a pretty hard task when companies like Kelloggs include misleading and confusing information on their product boxes.

Kelloggs and  other big food conglomerates are currently pushing the boundaries of food labeling in lieu of the imminent threat of government legislation.

Kelloggs puts their RDI percentages are at the top of cereal boxes. But is their message misleading?

Take a box of Coco Pops, for example. The nutritional information tells us that sugars make up 12% of your DI (dietary intake). You’d automatically think this is OK, BUT… Coco Pops also contains 36 grams of sugar per 100 grams or 36.5%.

Does Kelloggs nutritional information give you a fair representation of the amount of sugar contained in a box of Coco Pops? No.

If we go by Kelloggs’ information,  10% DI looks a lot lower than 36.5% sugar. Once again, this is just a clever way of manipulating nutritional information to give a skewed impression of a product.

Kelloggs recently said: “We now focus much of our efforts on promoting healthier cereals, such as Sultana Bran.”

Hmmm… Sultana Bran may provide a 1/3 of  daily fibre needs, but what about its 28.4% of sugar? Can it really be a healthier breakfast cereal?

The problem is that so many products are sold as high fibre or low fat, and therefore apparently healthy. But what companies don’t say is that they’re also high in sugar.

Put simply, we need a better system to manage nutritional information. It needs to be easier to understand, so that you don’t require an intricate knowledge of RDI or grams per 100 grams or grams per serving to understand it.

I quite like the traffic light system – it doesn’t get much simpler.  It’s so simple, in fact, that the Grocery Council of Australia are fighting its introduction or any discussion regarding its merits.

When we know that childhood obesity  tripled between 1985 and 1995 (according to the Australasian Society for the study of obesity), this issue becomes all the more serious.

So the real question is not whether you can advertise whatever you like and put the onus back on to parents to make the right decision.

It’s whether the current system of self-regulation is working at all.

Written by Andrew Talati

In a worrying development, the super foods term is being considered by Food Standards Australia for health claims.

Currently the code by Foods Standards Australia and New Zealand only allows for the Health claims of folate that the consumption of folate before and during pregnancy can help reduce the prevalence of spina bifida in babies.

While there is very clear evidence of the link between the consumption of folate and neural tube defects such as spina bifida, opening the flood gates to generic terminology which is not scientifically based is misleading consumers.

The idea behind the current food code is of providing an educational basis and to increase awareness.

Super Foods is a marketing term coined to increase the attractiveness of certain foods to drive sales.

I would be surprised in scientific circles if they use the term “Super” to describe reaction or result of the introduction of a chemicals, treatments or minerals to reduce or treat cancer.

Take the Heart Foundations Healthy Tick endorsement, which is really just another marketing tool in the arsenal of big corporations in the commoditising of our food supply.

I ask the question whether it is appropriate that McDonalds can have a Heart Foundation tick along side productions that have high levels of salt and fat.

Take dark chocolate for example which has high levels of anti-oxidants, if this a Superfood?, should we go out and eat a kilo of chocolate everyday as anti-oxidants have health benefits for your heart.

You only have to look at how food companies are currently misleading the consumer to see that introducing generic nondescript terminology will lead to the consumer being ill informed and mislead.

There will be a barrage of products with claims saying by eating product X that contains a known super food, you will reduce your risk of Diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

A more responsible approach is to educate the public about healthy eating rather than marketing food to solve the problems of a person having a poor diet.

It’s like telling someone to solve there clothes feeling too tight by adding another notch in their belt.

When you look at the the amount of sugar in the so called “Health bars’ are they healthy or really just confectionery marketed to look like a healthier alternative to chocolate bars?

From this selection of snack bars that are marketed to give the appearance of being healthy, are they really that much better than confectionery.

Is the packaging misleading consumers?

If you look at a lot of confectionery bars such as a 55gm Cadbury Cherry Ripe, it contains 27.9gms of sugar or just on 50% so lets compare this with the Nice & Natural, Carmans and Uncle Toby bars.

You will see from Nice and Natural that they contain 25.7% sugar while Carman’s contains 19.9% sugar.

So from Uncle Tobys there is also a high level of sugar at 28.2% which gets buried by showing the amount of sugar per serving size.

This gives a misleading indication and many people will rely on the the information on the front of the packaging that says “Total Sugars 8.8g DI 10%”

Don’t forget the high saturated fat content as well at 7.4%, 1.6% (good) or 9.4% respectively.

This leads to whether a product that contains 20-30% sugar is really not that far behind a chocolate confectionery bar at 50% sugar. Like any product that is high in energy or sugar, it should be consumed in moderation however these bars are often given to kids in there daily lunch boxes as the appearance of a healthy box ticks all the boxes.
Unfortunately with the childhood obesity issue, should these types of products be given to kids.

For a product to be appealing to kids or adults for that matter, it needs to have lots of sugar, salt or fats, so all 3 products score high in the sugar rating while only Carman’s has a low level of Saturated fat while Nice & Natural and Uncle Toby’s are at unacceptable levels (7.4% & 9.4% respectively) if these bars are construed as being healthy.

The most disturbing fact is the omission of “trans fats” that are the really nasty fats, or known as Hydronised vegetable oil, it’s intersting that Carman’s is the only bar that includes this at 0% while Uncle Toby’s and Nice & Natural have no listings.

Given that the later 2 products contain vegetable oi or vegetable fat, and the processes involved in the manufacturing process involves lots of heat, there is a good chance that these products would contain “trans fats”

So I’II let you decide whether you think these health bars are just confectionery?

Current Food labelling is misleading consumers with confusing information for the average person. By using a myriad of information, the product can appear to be healthy and within acceptable limits when in fact it is giving a different perception.

Research has shown that people do not fully understand what DI or daily intake represents or what a serving size should be based on there height or body weight.

Uncle Toby’s bars appear to be healthy with low levels of sugar when compared to the daily intake but contain a whopping 28.2% sugar based 28.2gms per 100gms.

By focusing on the serving size of 31.3gms, the sugar contained can be manipulated to appear low at 8.8gms or 10% of DI, rather than the true figure of 28.2gm/100gms.

Also using percentages captivates your interest. 20% of your daily wholegrain target, which is great if you’re not worried about consuming high levels of sugar (28.2%) and fat (17.3%) or more importantly 9.4% saturated fat, the stuff we should be avoiding.

Well to me a product that contains (8.8 grams/31.3grams) or 28% sugar is confectionery, so a 53 grams Mars bar has 31 grams of sugar so 2 Uncle Toby bars has 17.6 grams of sugar, only half that of a equivalent Mars bar.

It is interesting that the lines can be blurred when it comes to the language used to sell the product, things like “Goodness for greatness’.

I’m not sure what that you would consider vegetable fat, glucose, sugar, emulsifier (Soy Lecithin) & preservative 220 as being good for you, Goodness implies healthy which sounds a bit strange given this ingredients listing.

The BIG picture of the dripping stick of honey & an image of almonds implies that “Honey” and “almonds” constitutes a significant proportion of the ingredient listing, rather than a meagre 1% each.

A better system would be using the “Traffic light” system which has been introduced by the City Of Melbourne, which would mean that the Uncle Toby bars would be given a red for sugar & saturated fats, orange for general fats and green for salt.