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Get your free copy14 May 2012, 13:41 PM
- The government has begun a consultation with British food manufacturers, large retailers and health experts on how best to label nutritional content in food
The 12-week consultation aims to encourage all UK businesses to use a uniformed labelling system, making consumers aware of levels of fat, sugar, salt and calories in food.
Current formats include the red, amber and green ‘traffic light’ colour-coded system, as well as guideline daily amounts which offer a percentage of a person’s recommended daily intake.
Heath secretary Andrew Lansley said, “We want to arrive at a consistent format. At the moment we have a lot of different approaches, but I recognise there are some really big commercial interests here. What I want is for people to be able to buy the same shopping basket, but that basket has to have less saturated fats, fewer sugars and less salt in it. So it is about people changing their behaviour.
“Making even small changes to our diet can have a major impact on our health. Cutting our average salt intake by 1.6 grams a day would prevent over 10,000 premature deaths a year,” he added.
