Food firms announce new labelling scheme

Five UK food firms have joined forces to launch their own food labelling system for their products.

Danone, Kelloggs, Kraft, Nestle and PepsiCo will include details of the percentage of the daily intake allowance of ingredients such as sugar, fat and salt in their products.

Martin Glenn, chief executive of PepsiCo, said: "By having the information in this format on the front of packs, consumers will be able to compare similar products while they are shopping and make easy choices about which products best meet their dietary needs."

The move has been welcomed by the Food Standards Agency, which said it was "encouraging" that manufacturers were taking the need to improve food labelling seriously. However, the agency stressed the importance of working together to deliver a straightforward scheme for consumers.

The FSA is working on proposals for its own "traffic light" scheme, a colour-coded system, which would show whether food had high, medium or low levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

The proposals are supported by consumer group Which? Sue Davies, the group's chief policy adviser, said: "It is essential that a consistent labelling format is used across all brands if consumers are to be able to easily identify which products are high in fat, sugar and salt and compare between them.

"It's of no use to consumers if a branded product such as Kellogg's Cornflakes, for example, has a different labelling scheme to the pack of own-label cornflakes sitting next to them on the shelf."

Liberal Democrat health spokesperson Steve Webb said it was "heartening" to see the food industry taking the initiative over food labelling, but said that consumers would benefit more from a national standardised scheme.

He said: "Bombarding busy shoppers with numerous different figures will only serve to make healthy eating harder. Consumers would benefit from straightforward labels that allow people to get nutritional information at a glance."

(KMcA)