The front of pack nutrition labelling battleground looks set to intensify as yet another retail group adopts the traffic light system.
Musgrave Budgens Londis has informed Food Manufacture that it plans to go ahead with the traffic lights scheme, rather than using guideline daily amounts (GDAs) adopted by Tesco and supported by a number of manufacturers and the Food and Drink Federation.
So far, other retailers such as Sainsbury, Waitrose and The Co-operative Group have come out in favour of traffic lights, which is preferred by the Food Standards Agency, while Asda has announced that it will be supporting this option in the future. Musgrave’s decision will strengthen arguments in favour of traffic lights, in a battle that is known to be causing some divisions among food and drink manufacturers.
While big branded players such as Unilever and others support GDAs, only McCain and New Covent Garden Food have so far gone public in their support for traffic lights. Meanwhile, own-label suppliers such as Greencore are doing as their customers dictate.
Sainsbury’s head of brand policy and sustainability, Alison Austin, has admitted that front of pack nutritional labelling of food and drink is a competitive issue among retailers. However, like Tesco, it is making Sainsbury re-evaluate what it offers its customers since, regardless of labelling option adopted, it is influencing buying habits.
“Our wheel of health is driving change,” she told a Food Processing Faraday Partnership conference on sustainable food production and consumption. “We have more green and ambers than ambers and reds, and it is driving volumes.”
Austin referred to the “schism” that existed within the sector between those retailers and manufacturers supporting GDAs and others, such as her own company, which have opted for the traffic light systems.
“The research we have done has found tremendous influences on people’s behaviours,” she said. “Yes, people are using front of pack for competitive advantage. Front of pack labelling has always been a competitive area. The sad fact is legislation often lags behind.”
However, at a Westminster Diet and Health Forum seminar on front of pack labelling, Mary Wood, psychotherapist and chief executive of Foundations UK, a charity that links physical and mental vitality with eating and exercise, questioned the effectiveness of the whole concept.
“Eating is an impulse, reading labels is not - so can labelling really change behaviour, particularly of those that most need it?” she asked.
Wood claimed that a person’s situation on the poor/wealthy or happy/depressed spectrum was a key driver for food choices, and said fat, depressed people were less likely to read labels.
She also referred to recent research, which found that when offered chocolate with a low fat label, obese people consumed nearly 50% more calories than they would have if they had chosen the full fat version. “Labels trick, and create a ‘health halo’,” she said. In the same study, normal-weight people were also “tricked”, but only ate 16% more calories.
“Labelling has a part to play, but we mustn’t be complacent,” she warned. “We’ve got to be realistic about how much they will affect behaviour, and not create a ‘health halo’ giving people permission to over-eat.”
Further calls were made at the seminar for industry to unite and adopt one single scheme. Moira Howie, nutrition manager at Waitrose, claimed 93% of consumers want the industry to adopt a single front of pack system. While Dr Sarah Schenker, dietician at the British Dietetic Association (BDA) said the BDA favoured the FSA’s traffic lights system, as this was “understood by consumers across all socio-economic groups”.
And Barbara Gallani, food policy advisor at the European Consumers’ Association said the “plethora of confusing messages was turning consumers off, rather than helping them make better choices”