Feedback on Front-of-Pack Labelling
A series of focus groups have been conducted across England and Scotland, looking into people’s views and awareness of food labelling. The findings of these groups were published by the Food Standards Agency today and showed that people have a high awareness of front-of-pack labelling, feeling it was an important way of making informed choices about food, as well as saving time.
However, there was an agreement amongst the forum members that a unified system of front-of-pack labelling would be of great help. The different schemes used by different retailers to display the same information not only makes comparisons more difficult, they claimed, but also sheds doubt on the trustworthiness of the information itself. They agreed that a single way of displaying the information would be quicker to compare, easier to understand and more trustworthy than the current variety of systems.
The forums decided the most important elements of font-of-pack labelling include the amount of each nutrient in grams, the percentage of the Guideline Daily Amount this amount equates to and the traffic light system for quick decision-making. An example of such a label could be as follows:
