Nutritional Alert Levels

by Nicole Weston, Posted Nov 22nd 2005 @ 7:06AM

The British Food Standards Agency is developing a voluntary label to indicate the levels of total fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt contained in packaged foods. The colors are reminiscent of the terror alert levels used by the US Department of Homeland Security. The label would be designed in a “multiple traffic lights” style, with red indicating high levels, yellow indicating moderate levels and green indicating low levels, and one light for each of the four categories. Consumers in focus groups preferred the brightly colored indicators to labels that featured numerical values for content and recommended nutritional values. Labels that featured the recommended nutritional guidelines were found to be difficult for some consumers to decipher; they could not correctly identify whether the amount of fat or sugar in question was high or low. The labeling project was undertaken because consumers indicated that they wanted to make healthier choices, but often had a hard time determining what the healthiest choices were.

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Filed Under: New Products
Tags: british isles