All existing front-of-pack systems of the world

September 3th, 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