FSA agrees colour-coded food labelling

The Food Standards Agency has agreed a recommendation for a colour-coded 'traffic light' system for food labelling to be used as the industry standard.

The FSA scheme, which is voluntary, recommends that supermarkets and manufacturers develop labelling that uses red, amber or green colour coding to indicate whether levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar or salt are high, medium or low.

Deidre Hutton, Chair of the Food Standards Agency, said: "We all lead busy lives, so making healthier choices when shopping needs to be quick and easy. Developing a consistent way of clearly highlighting how much fat, sugar and salt a food contains will make it simpler for people to put healthy eating advice into practice when shopping.

"The evidence of buying patterns is that people are looking for healthier foods and they have told us that traffic light colours are key to helping them understand and use front of pack food labels."

The FSA said that Sainsbury's and Waitrose would be the first retailers to use the recommended packaging, followed by Asda.

Waitrose Marketing Director, Christian Cull said that a "consistent approach" was the best way to allow consumers to make informed decisions about what they eat, while Justin King, Sainsbury's Chief Executive, said that the scheme was the "simplest and clearest way of giving customers the information they are looking for."

In February, five UK food firms - Danone, Kelloggs, Kraft, Nestle and PepsiCo - joined forces to launch their own food labelling system for the products.

Their scheme included details of the percentage of the daily intake allowance of ingredients such as sugar, fat and salt in their products.

Consumer group Which? had warned that a consistent labelling format was needed for consumers to be able to easily identify which products were high in fat, sugar and salt. Sue Davies, the group's chief policy adviser, said: "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."

Commenting on today's announcement, Ms Davies said: "The FSA recommendations are flexible enough for all the food industry to adopt. However, manufacturers and retailers must use the FSA's nutritional criteria to ensure consumers get consistent information."

(KMcA/GB)