WHO Europe Action Plan calls for easy to understand front-of-pack labeling and more product reformulation

September 22nd, 2014

In its “European Food and Nutrition Action Plan 2015-2020”, WHO Europe calls upon all European governments to strengthen their actions on healthier food and do so in an integrated approach. The urgency is there. More than half of the adults in Europe suffers from overweight or obesity and the toll of NCDs is unnecessarily high.

Choices International welcomes this call for action. It includes valuable action points on reformulation and labeling, that closely fit with the Choices programme.
 
Regarding the quality of the food supply, further steps in lowering the salt, sugar, SAFA and transfat content of food products are strongly advised, with a leading role for governments. Also the supply of healthier foods in catering outlets, e.g. at schools, is recommended as well as healthy retail environments.

On communication, the Action Plan asks governments to increase consumer friendly labeling by establishing easy-to-understand or interpretive front-of-pack labels , to help consumers to identify healthier options and to encourage producers and retailers to reformulate their products.
Besides, further steps are strongly requested in limitation of marketing to children of food products high in sugar, salt, SAFA and transfat  These steps should also include internet and social media.
Talking about the internet, the Action encourages the use of social media to promote healthy food choices and healthy life styles.

The Action Plan makes clear that the success of the envisioned actions depends on monitoring as well as stakeholder engagement, including the agri-food sector.

New Choices Board president

September 18th, 2014

Today Clémence Ross has started as the new President of the Board of the Choices International Foundation. Clémence Ross was State Secretary of Health in the Netherlands from 2003 to 2007 and served the Dutch Choices Foundation “Ik Kies Bewust” as Chair from 2007 until 2014.

As the new Choices Board president she seeks to broaden the scope by not only contributing to further success of the Choices front-of-pack logo around the world, but in addition also placing the logo in a broader movement for healthy food choices.

All existing front-of-pack systems of the world

September 3rd, 2014

In a recent publication of the European Journal of Nutrition and Food Safety (see reference) a group of students of Wageningen University supervised by Hans Verhagen, Liesbeth Temme and Susanne Westenbrink from the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands brought together all front-of-pack labelling systems aimed at healthier choices. They found 40 of such systems coming from all continents, and visualized the characteristics of all of them in a standardized Funnel Model. Governing of these systems could be by government, companies or NGOs and only seldom by universities; 90% of the systems have criteria based on thresholds and only a few use a scoring approach. More disqualifying than qualifying criteria are used. The most frequently used disqualifiers are: saturated fatty acids, total fat, trans fatty acids, sugar, sodium, energy and cholesterol. The most popular qualifying criteria are dietary fibre, protein and calcium. This overview creates an excellent opportunity to compare individual front-of-pack systems like Choices, Keyhole, Heart logos, single colour or colour coded GDA and many more on eight different characteristics.

Reference: Van Der Bend cs. A Simple Visual Model to Compare Existing Front-of-pack Nutrient Profiling Schemes; European Journal of Nutrition and Food Safety 4(4): 429-534, 2014 http://www.sciencedomain.org/abstract.php?iid=513&id=30&aid=5399