Give it a green light

by Nicole Weston, Posted Apr 25th 2006 @ 7:03AM

The traffic light system is a voluntary food labeling system devised by the British Food Standards Agency to denote with a single glance the levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt in products. While not necessarily intended to let consumers know that the product is health food, it does give them a very fast, clear idea of what they are about to eat. Several supermarkets, including Waitrose and Sainsburys have adopted the program with surprising results: sales of unhealthy foods have dropped and healthier foods have increased.

Why is this working when so many other awareness campaigns have failed in the past, or enjoyed only a very limited success? It seems to be the fact that the labels are hard to ignore. Or rather, it is that they take no effort to read. A consumer doesn't have to spend time trying to decipher a nutritional label or wonder what "48% less fat!" really refers to. They don't have to draw attention to the fact that they want to know the nutritional information, which can be embarrassing for some shoppers.

Clearly, it isn't enough just to educate consumers. People already have a basic awareness of what their nutritional needs are - and of what they should be - at this point, but sticking to an eating plan is still difficult. It is easy to pretend a pastrami sandwich is smaller than it really is and even easier to rationalize having one at lunch by thinking that it couldn't be that much worse than the turkey, right? People want easy access to information about food just as much as they want access to the food itself.

A "traffic light"-style labeling system eliminates the hassle of label-reading and the stigma of "diet" foods. It is much easier to think in black and white - or red and green. The greens are good for everyday and the reds are fine once in a while. The change in consumer choices was immediately evident in the UK; with an impact like that, this sounds like a program that should be considered in the US and elsewhere.

Filed Under: Trends, Did you know?, Light Food
Tags: america, britain, british isles, did you know, diet, fat, food, food standards agency, fsa, health, healthy, information, junk food, label, light food, nutrition, nutrition label, salt, saturated fat, sugar, traffic light, TrafficLight, trends

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-25-2006 @7:27AM Alex said... This is not quite the whole story though. Here in the UK much has been made of the fact that the pictured Food Standards Agency traffic light system is, in fact, a recommendation which has not been embraced by the major retailers.

Sainsburys, mentioned in the article, uses its own system, the Wheel of Health. It looks as though Waitrose does actually use the FSA system, while Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket retailer, uses a different system again.

While it's good that sales of 'unhealthy' foods have dropped I suspect these new systems look like they're working purely because people are lazy. The best thing would be if people didn't eat processed food and learnt about what their food contains. A food that is high in fat (eg nuts) could be extremely nutritious, while a food that gets a go-ahead in all the categories might have naff all nutritional content!

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4-25-2006 @6:57PM Victoria said... It's no help to those of us who watch both sugar AND starches. It's yet another "fat is evil" device to keep people away from healthy and natural fats. Low-fat Cheese-Its would be healthy under this standard, even though it is most certainly a junk food, while nuts would be bad because of the high amount of fat in them.

Something is wrong when Cheese-Its are "healthier" than nuts.
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