The UK’s National Heart Forum (NHF) has slated Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) schemes used instead of the Food Standards Agency’s traffic light labelling system as fundamentally flawed, while the UK’s largest retailer disagrees.
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In a report, called ‘Misconceptions and misinformation: the problems with Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs)’, the NHF said that these labels were misleading and confusing, and accused companies of mixing GDA information with other claims and promotional labels on front of food packaging.
Jane Landon, deputy chief executive of the National Heart Forum said: “This report shows that some manufacturers and retailers are failing their customers by using nutritional food labels which are overly complex and misleading. Some even appear to be manipulating the front-of-pack label to promote their products rather than to inform their customers.
“Guideline Daily Amounts represent population goals for particular nutrients. Presenting these as percentages on the front of food packaging suggests to the consumer that these are daily targets. Without reading the small print on the back of the packet it is not clear that for fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt these figures represent limits rather than targets. With as little as four seconds for each purchase, what consumers need to be able to see ‘at a glance’ on the front of the pack is whether a product is high, medium or low in key nutrients.”
The NHF also said that manufacturers and retailers were creating extra GDA signposts such as ‘whole grain’ for which there is no scientifically agreed value, and adding and removing signposts selectively.
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By GlobalDataGuideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) currently appear on products from a number of manufacturers and on many Tesco own-brand goods.
A Tesco spokesperson responded: “We refute the idea that the GDA labelling scheme is complex and misleading. The test for any nutritional labelling system is whether it changes behaviour and our nutritional signposts are doing just that. They are helping customers to make healthier choices because they are easy to understand and by giving the actual data rather than just a colour, customers are able to make informed decisions.
“The criticisms raised by NHF are wrong – arguably traffic light alternatives are more misleading as the colours are based on portion sizes of 100g/100ml’s regardless of the portion size.”
Tesco said that its cheese slice pack explicitly states the GDA information per slice, but accepted that its 2 litre cola bottle’s 100ml description could be misleading, and is currently in the process of changing this to apply to a 250ml serving.
Landon said: “Repeated surveys show that consumers would like to see one, universal labelling scheme – such as the traffic lights scheme – whatever the brand, wherever they shop. Companies using GDA signpost labels should reconsider their approach and we hope this report will give pause for thought to those retailers and manufacturers who are currently undecided about front-of-pack nutrition labelling.”
