Junk food giants baffle us with new health labels

JUNK food giants have been accused of trying to confuse families with new labels which could make their products appear healthy.

Mars, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and Cadbury-owner Mondelez are joining forces to support new pack labels that take portion size into account.

They insist this will help customers eat a balanced diet and combat obesity.

However, the consumer group Which? says the food giants should sign up to the traffic light labelling scheme currently adopted in the UK, rather than try to invent something else.

The UK labels used by most supermarkets and many brands list fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt with either red, amber of green logos to identify whether they are high, medium or low in these ingredients.

The idea is that people can see, at a glance, whether a product has lots of red logos and should be eaten occasionally.

The labels favoured by the food giants would use the same model, but also incorporate a measure covering portion size. This means a manufacturer that uses a small portion size in its calculations could ensure a product that would currently be ‘red’ for fat or sugar is downgraded to ‘amber’.

Vickie Sheriff, director of campaigns at Which?, said: ‘These food manufacturers should commit to the existing UK traffic light labelling scheme that is already used by many companies, rather than inventing a new one that is potentially confusing.’

In a joint statement the food and drink firms said: ‘Smaller portion sizes play a key role to support healthier consumer choices and should therefore be recognised as such in an evolved nutrition labelling scheme.’

As a result, they have launched a taskforce, which will include consumers, to find a way of incorporating portion sizes in a traffic light labelling scheme.