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Nomad boss calls for mandatory health labelling on food products
Stefan Descheemaeker made the plea following the publication of the House of Lords report into health and obesity last week.
Nomad was one of three large food manufacturers to offer oral evidence to the inquiry earlier this year, with Descheemaeker welcoming the report and describing it as a “major step forward in tackling public health and diet”.
As it stands, voluntary labelling exists in the UK in the shape of the Multiple Traffic Light Labelling system, which Nomad already participates in.
However, Descheemaeker would like to see health labelling made mandatory in order to “help consumers to make more informed food choices”.
In a statement published shortly after the House of Lords report was made available, he also called for measures relating to sales and taxing.
“We support measures requiring companies to report on the proportion of their sales that come from healthy products, which we have been doing for the last seven years,” Descheemaeker said.
“On tax, we believe this should be science-based in line with the UK Government’s Nutrient Profiling Model, that determines whether a product is healthy or less healthy based on its overall nutritional profile, rather than focusing on the specific levels of individual nutrients. This model would then help incentivise companies to reformulate to create healthier products.”
Headquartered in the UK, Nomad is one of the largest frozen food companies in the world, and owns brands including Birds Eye and Aunt Bessie’s.
Key takeaways
Following the release of the Lords report, Food Manufacture published a breakdown of the key takeaways for the sector.
Potential new measures recommended by the report include more stringent HFSS regulations, new sugar and salt taxes, clearer labelling and mandatory health reporting.
Commenting on the findings, Baroness Walmsley, chair of the Food, Diet and Obesity Committee, said: “Food should be a pleasure and contribute to our health and wellbeing, but it is making too many people ill.
“Something must be going wrong if almost two in five children are leaving primary school with overweight or obesity and so many people are finding it hard to feed healthy food to their families. That is why we took a root and branch look at the food system and analysed what had gone wrong over the past few decades.”
In other news, Food Manufacture has published its latest food and drink trends report, summarising all the hottest topics from 2024 with insight from a slew of industry figures.
