Common sense looses again. Multinational corporate manufacturers including Coca-Cola, Nestle and Kelloggs’s oppose a colour labelling scheme, in favour of their favoured percentage-based Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA). Last Wednesday, they stood triumphant as the European Parliament announced its rejection of an enforcement of the tri-colour traffic-light labelling system supported by much of the scientific community, including The British Medical Council and British Heart Foundation. The GDA lobby claims that this type of labelling over-simplifies the relevant dietary information about a product and misleads consumers. Some have even claimed it could lead to chronic nutritional deficiencies if an all green-light diet was maintained. This decision, and its proponents, seem short-sighted and naive – simplification is exactly what is needed.

Picture yourself in the aisles. Long day at work or perhaps a pair of screaming kids. Quick decisions to be made. You don’t have a biology degree but you vaguely know that too much fat isn’t great, nor is sugar, or salt – however, the amount your body of each requires every day escapes you (like the rest of us). So while yes, a set of percentages and grams per packet of any given thing might be analytically more informative, it is totally useless if you cannot be bothered (or do not know how) to read, digest and evaluate every product you drop into your cart. In fact, I would guess that the lobby were counting on it. The tri-colour system gives a obvious, easily-understandable and quick overview of the rough healthiness of the product. The system doesn’t assume that you will only eat green foods (low sugar, salt and fat containing foods), but only that on average you will avoid a high proportion of red products. It rids of a small-print table of scary looking numbers which most people avoid just because they don’t have time (or don’t want!) to look at it. But you can’t help but look at those distinctive angry red labels on that tub of Ben & Jerry’s, or deep-fried pizza, or marshmellow cereal. That’s what they’re scared of. People being told something is bad for them and not simply counting on someone making the strenuous decision for themselves – because they know, as we all do: people would rather not know, thank you very much.

Tired, bored and motivated by simple-pleasures, without something to stimulate the desire for healthiness the desire to educate the populous about what is good for them and a push to reduce obesity will fail. Simplicity, as Da Vinci said, is the ultimate sophistication. So please, European Parliament, enlighten our food decisions.

Andrew Gardner

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/laid-bare-the-lobbying-campaign-that-won-the-food-labelling-battle-2003686.html

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