Spell out the booze risks, industry told
Alcohol producers’ moves to add nutritional data seen as a ‘smokescreen’, writes Chloe Winter.
Tobacco-style warnings should be placed on all alcoholic drinks to reflect their grave danger to health, an expert believes.
After a new study revealed the safe limits of daily alcohol consumption were much lower than previously thought, Professor Doug Sellman, of the National Addiction Centre, said there needed to be clearer labelling on bottles about risks that included brain damage to unborn children and cancer.
Beer producers have started adding nutritional information panels, including sugar content, preservatives, carbohydrate content, and total kilojoules/calories, to their labels.
But Sellman believes nutritional labels are a ‘‘smokescreen’’ against placing proper health warning labels on alcoholic beverages.
‘‘These are the kinds of labels that need to go on to wine bottles, rather than all the nutritional issues,’’ he said. ‘‘The nutritional issues are just completely trivial.’’
Healthy Food Guide nutritionist Claire Turnbull said it was ‘‘quite strange’’ there was no legal requirement to list nutritional information on alcoholic drinks.
‘‘Why do you have to have it on fruit juice and water, but you don’t have to have it on alcoholic drinks?’’
Consumers should be able to make informed choices, she said.
‘‘If you don’t want to look at the label, you don’t have to, but if it’s there, at least you’ve got the information to make the choices that you need to.
‘‘When it comes to nutritional labelling, transparency is really important and I think that it’s a logical thing to do. It’s odd that it’s not there.’’
Master of Wine Bob Campbell said it would be a world-first if New Zealand wine producers
These are the kinds of labels that need to go on to wine bottles, rather than all the nutritional issues. Professor Doug Sellman
added nutritional and health warning labels.
He did not think listing the number of calories and the sugar content on wine bottles was ‘‘terribly relevant’’.
‘‘I just wonder if you can get too nanny-state about this, I just can’t see the point in it.
‘‘Everyone has got a device and access to Google, they can pretty quickly find out the broad brush at least, the nutritional data that they need.
‘‘All information doesn’t do any harm, it’s good stuff, for disclosure, but I think we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.’’
New Zealand Winegrowers chief executive Philip Gregan said the wine industry was not looking at following the beer brewers.
‘‘Wines have often been labelled dry, medium and sweet for years, so there’s often been that sort of information presented, but telling somebody there is 5 grams per litre of something, in many cases, [consumers] won’t know what that means.
‘‘So describing the wine as dry, medium, or sweet, is in many ways far more consumer-friendly.’’
There is no obligation to provide any other information, as alcohol producers are not legally required to feature nutritional data or ingredients lists on any products, under an exemption provided to the industry by the Food Standards Code.