Last week Tesco announced it was extending front-of-pack guideline daily amounts to more than 5,000 products. Will this help consumers or add to the confusion, asks Sylvia Thompson
Nutritional labelling has become the latest marketing strategy employed by supermarkets keen to attract the growing numbers of health-conscious food shoppers. Last week, one of Ireland's largest supermarket chains, Tesco, announced that it had extended front-of-pack guideline daily amounts (GDAs) to more than 5,000 food products.
In addition, the international supermarket giant declared that it would have GDAs on all its own- brand products in Ireland within 18 months.
"This front-of-pack signposting of key nutrients is clear and easy to understand, ensuring the customers can make informed choices while shopping for food," says Paula Mee, dietitian and nutrition consultant to Tesco. "This will really help customers to compare at a glance what's in a serving and help them choose the products that are most suited to their own particular needs."
But what exactly are GDAs and do they really help consumers choose more healthy foods?
Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, director of food health and nutrition at Safefood, the food safety promotion board, says GDAs are useful because they tell consumers the percentage of major nutrients such as fat, sugar, protein, salt and fibre a certain food contains.
"They guide consumers and the use of percentages is as good as you'll get in terms of numerical calculations. But, they are really only a benchmark for consumers. Nobody is expected to calculate their full percentages of GDAs on a daily basis," she says.
Foley-Nolan explains how GDAs are not to be confused with RDAs, the recommended daily amounts applied to micronutrients - the essential vitamins and minerals required by an average adult and legislated for under EU food law.
According to Foley-Nolan, the GDAs are particularly good for processed foods in which the amounts of sugar, fat and salt vary hugely. "The problem with processed and ready-made meals is that people become accustomed to tasting high levels of salt and sugar and, therefore, lose the power to discriminate between high and low levels," she says.
She suggests consumers look at the GDAs on different tins of soup or packets of biscuits. They will then realise there is quite a variation and, therefore, a real choice to make between products.
The nutritional labelling system also includes the energy GDA which is measured in kilocalories. The energy GDA is 2,000 kilocalories for the average woman and 2,500 for the average man but most products use 2,000 kilocalories to calculate the energy GDA to discourage over-consumption.
However, GDAs, which are essentially a voluntary nutritional code, are not without their critics. Earlier this year the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) introduced a traffic light system to indicate a product's nutritional value which it claimed would make choosing healthy products much easier for consumers.
Under this system, food which is high in calories, salt, sugar and/or fat will be clearly stamped with a red light while more wholesome options are green-lighted. The amber light signifies a food which is a reasonable healthy option.
British food retailer M&S has introduced FSA's traffic light system alongside the GDAs nutritional labelling on the pack's front of some of its food products, including ready-made meals. Currently, plans are to extend both nutritional labelling systems to all recommended FSA categories.
Michael O'Shea, the Irish Heart Foundation's chief executive, believes the traffic light system is a better form of nutritional labelling. "Comprehensive research by the FSA [ UK] demonstrates that the GDA system developed and promoted by sections of the food industry is not the most effective form of food labelling," he says.
Pointing specifically to its use on cereals, O'Shea says knowing that a certain cereal provides 5 per cent of your GDA of salt and/or sugar is irrelevant given that the sugar content of many of these products is too high.
"The European Heart Network has backed the traffic light system of nutritional labelling. It's more consumer friendly in that if you are shopping for a family, you can simply choose most products with green and amber lights and a few red-lighted food products and know that they are leaning towards a healthy diet."
O'Shea acknowledges, however, that the traffic light food labelling system has some inherent difficulties. For example, cheese will have a red light because of its high fat content yet it is a healthy food. "An educational advertising campaign would overcome this kind of problem," he says.
"We also must remember that food labelling is only one link in the chain to help people lead more healthy lives. The banning of advertising of food products directed at children is another as is the development of a network of playgrounds."
Foley-Nolan says a standardisation of nutritional labelling throughout Europe would be helpful for consumers.
"It will probably take up to a decade to standardise nutritional labelling," she says. Meanwhile, she reminds us that only about 15 per cent of consumers consult nutritional labelling when food shopping. What we all need to do is to internalise the approximate amounts of nutrients different foods contain.
"Such an intuitive knowledge of choosing healthy foods is the best way to ensure you eat a healthy, balanced diet."