from Kevin Hawkins, director general, British Retail Consortium
Sir; Ms Johnson declares that she wants to work with the food industry to meet the goal of reducing salt content (‘Johnson: we need to work together’, The Grocer, October 16, p36). Some of us might, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking otherwise but, hey, better a late conversion than none at all.
However, she then refers to “further salt reduction plans” which she and the Food Standards Agency are due to “assess”. I am not aware of any such plans. For the umpteenth time, last February the BRC submitted a framework agreement committing its members to reducing salt content across nine product categories by 10% to 25% over the next five years. This is a basic commitment which members are entirely free to exceed, in other words to move further and
faster, as some are already doing. We have not submitted any “further plans” and have made clear to the DoHealth that we see no need to do so.
As far as the proposed “blind trust” is concerned, I would certainly hope that no final decision has been made as the food industry has yet to see a proper proposal.
Everyone is for clearer labelling but we, along with most qualified nutritionists, struggle with the notion that a single traffic light applied to each and every product on our shelves will bring clarity. The point is that most products contain ingredients or have attributes which are both more and less healthy, and you could justify a red, yellow or green symbol depending on which of these characteristics you judged to be the most important, fat, sugar, glycaemic index, energy density, etc.
One single traffic light inevitably means classifying foods as good or bad, or at least many consumers will so regard them. And that is quite contrary to the notion of a balanced diet, a little bit of everything, which Ms Johnson says she supports.
Before we can have clearer labelling, we need clearer thinking about what we are trying to tell those consumers (about half the total) who bother to even look at labels.
Sir; Ms Johnson declares that she wants to work with the food industry to meet the goal of reducing salt content (‘Johnson: we need to work together’, The Grocer, October 16, p36). Some of us might, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking otherwise but, hey, better a late conversion than none at all.
However, she then refers to “further salt reduction plans” which she and the Food Standards Agency are due to “assess”. I am not aware of any such plans. For the umpteenth time, last February the BRC submitted a framework agreement committing its members to reducing salt content across nine product categories by 10% to 25% over the next five years. This is a basic commitment which members are entirely free to exceed, in other words to move further and
faster, as some are already doing. We have not submitted any “further plans” and have made clear to the DoHealth that we see no need to do so.
As far as the proposed “blind trust” is concerned, I would certainly hope that no final decision has been made as the food industry has yet to see a proper proposal.
Everyone is for clearer labelling but we, along with most qualified nutritionists, struggle with the notion that a single traffic light applied to each and every product on our shelves will bring clarity. The point is that most products contain ingredients or have attributes which are both more and less healthy, and you could justify a red, yellow or green symbol depending on which of these characteristics you judged to be the most important, fat, sugar, glycaemic index, energy density, etc.
One single traffic light inevitably means classifying foods as good or bad, or at least many consumers will so regard them. And that is quite contrary to the notion of a balanced diet, a little bit of everything, which Ms Johnson says she supports.
Before we can have clearer labelling, we need clearer thinking about what we are trying to tell those consumers (about half the total) who bother to even look at labels.
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