Food labelling in the UK

A lot of effort has been investment by Government bodies and food manufacturers over recent years to give us more information about the food we eat and drink.

As a consumer this should be very welcome. It is there to help us make informed choices about what we buy. And, often more importantly, what we choose not to buy. But in some cases it seems that we have only been confused even more by the variety of information available.

In this section we will take a look at three very important information sources which can be found on food labels. There is an ongoing argument between the groups who prefer one system over the other. It may be resolved in future if we, the consumers, make our preferred choice known. We can do that by choosing to spend our money on the system that gives us the best chance of improving our diets.

The nutritional panel – where we can find the calorie content and nutritional values in grams of major nutrients per 100g of the food

The traffic light system – where we can usually find the content of major nutrient groups, colour coded in a simple way

The GDA system – where we are shown the nutritional content of the product by serving size and what percentage that forms of published Guideline Daily Amounts.

All three systems can help us to choose foods that more closely match the requirements of our daily diet. Many manufacturers are now combining elements of all three into a multi-coloured assault on our senses.This risks bringing back the confusion which led to the diverse systems in the first place. To make matters worse some multinational suppliers now present the information in multiple languages too. It's almost as if they are trying to outwit the consumer - perhaps because their products would not stand up to the scrutiny of an angry, well-informed shopper...

The Food Standards Agency is representing the UK’s interests in a new set of negotiations which are taking place within Europe. The objective is to define a new definition for food labelling which can apply across the whole of Europe. The process kicked off in early 2008 and will probably take several years before agreement is reached across Europe. After that each country will have to legislate to incorporate the new system into its own laws.