This week, The Grocer went to see the Food Standards Agency. It's fair to say they are not best pleased with our Weigh It Up! campaign. So it was a good chance to clear the air and allow them to set the record straight.

If you haven't been reading this magazine for the past few weeks, we've been campaigning against the FSA's Nutrient Profiling Model, which has seen a number of food products - including cheese, Marmite, raisins, olive oil etc - banned from advertising to children on TV; products that we, along with a number of nutritionists, dieticians, health-food manufacturers, celebrity chefs and doctors - consider healthy and nutritious as part of a balanced diet.

It was an enlightening encounter. And the FSA cleared up two crucial issues. First, it confirmed it is not lobbying the EFSA - which is attempting to develop an EU-wide nutrient profiling system to determine which foods can make health claims on labels - to adopt the FSA model. Second, it states that its model was only ever intended for use by Ofcom, and has no plans to push for its use by other advertising regulators or others. And in addition, the FSA promised to look at alternative systems in the future and talk to anyone who has a better model.

These facts offer hope to a number of manufacturers and retailers. But what was equally striking was that the FSA professed nothing wrong with the present system and expressed amazement that the food industry might be fearful of criticising, in public, any of the measures it has introduced. I have spoken to more than two dozen leading manufacturers and retailers who, while privately supporting our campaign, will not go on the record. One supermarket CEO described the FSA as "acting like a student union with a multi-million budget". One wonders, why has FSA been so thick-skinned?