About time

Food companies across the EU will have to put key nutritional information such as fat, sugar and salt content on the front of packaging under new legislation. The regulations will simplify the different labeling laws throughout Europe and should, for instance, mark the end of companies putting the sodium content on in miniscule writing on the back of packaging, something which is not of much use to consumers when it comes to working out the salt content unless they are pretty handy when it comes to mental arithmetic. If the regulations are passed by member countries, it will be mandatory for producers to provide nutritional information on all pre-packaged processed foods and the energy, fat, saturated fat, carbohydrates, sugars and salt content will have to be displayed in terms of the per 100ml/100 grammes or per portion on the front of packaging in easy to read labels. While this is good news, I wonder where it is going to leave the Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) system and the traffic light systems that many British producers introduced last year? EU health commissioner Markos Kyprianou said he thought the traffic light labelling system, which is being promoted by the British Food Standards Agency, risked “oversimplification”.