A number of the UK’s leading food producers are to place nutritional content informations on the front of food packaging as concerns about health and obesity rise in the market.
The move by Kraft, Danone, Kellogg, Nestlé and PepsiCo pre-empts efforts by the UK’s Food Standards Agency to introduce a “traffic light” system of green, amber and red labels to show levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.
The system being introduced independently by the collection of food companies instead favours guideline daily allowance (GDA) information – where the percentage of an individual’s recommended daily amount of key nutrients contained in a portion is shown. Details on calories, sugar, fat, saturates and salt will be shown.
The move by the food groups comes as a three-month consultation period by the FSA comes to a close. Details of the recommendations from the FSA will be made public in March. Critics of the food industry have already suggested that today’s news is an effort to derail efforts by the FSA to introduce its traffic light system across the industry.
However, the food groups say they will look at talking to other manufacturers to see if they can get their method accepted as an industry standard.
