Question marks hang
over
Just-Food.com
In a fresh bid to show they're serious about rising obesity,
US food manufacturers have joined forces to launch the Smart Choices Program,
an industry-wide initiative to promote healthy eating through product labelling. The move has been broadly welcomed although the
jury is out on which labels will be the most effective tool in getting the
On one key issue at least, US food makers have decided that
co-operation is vital.
Some of the industry's biggest companies - and rivals -
including General Mills, Kraft Foods and Unilever have joined forces on the
thorny issue of nutrition labelling.
How consumers are told about the contents of the food they
eat has been a subject of fierce debate in the
In a bid to tackle rising obesity and, let's face it, tap
into growing demand Stateside for
"healthier" products, US food manufacturers have in recent years
launched a series of individual initiatives to provide more nutritional
information to consumers. Kraft has had its 'Sensible Solutions' programme, designed to help shoppers "easily identify
better-for-you foods". Unilever has sold products bearing an 'Eat Smart'
logo.
And retailers have got in on the act, too, with Delhaize Group's
However, as the number of such schemes in the marketplace
increases, so does confusion among consumers. And with consumer confusion comes
the threat of consumer disinterest, a dangerous notion for food manufacturers
as, some industry watchers argue, US regulators begin to study what industry is
doing to help tackle obesity ever more closely.
Against that backdrop, the US food industry's titans,
alongside academics, nutritionists and public health organisations,
have spent the best part of two years developing an industry-wide scheme that
it is hoped will provide greater clarity for consumers and provide an effective
tool in getting shoppers to, as one executive close to the scheme says,
"build a healthy diet".
The initiative, dubbed the Smart Choices Program, will
measure products against a set of nutritional criteria, including limits on
ingredients like saturated fat and salt, as well as the amount of
"nutrients to encourage", including calcium, potassium and fibre. Products that qualify will carry the Smart Choices
symbol on packages, which will also carry information about the number of
calories per serving and number of servings per container.
The Smart Choices logo is set to roll out in the middle of next
year and signatories to the initiative are confident that it will help improve
the health of US consumers. "We're really proud of the outcome,"
Douglas Balentine, Unilever's director of nutrition
sciences in the
Not only are participants looking to provide more
information on the nutritional content of products currently on sale but they
believe the programme is further evidence of their
commitment to invest more money on making their existing products healthier.
"One of the fundamental objectives of the programme is to provide incentives for manufacturers to
reformulate their existing products and innovate [to create] new ones,"
insists Brad Sperber, director of the health and
social policy practice area of The Keystone Center, the advisory group behind
Smart Choices.
As you'd expect, consumer groups have taken a keen interest
in the initiative. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the
major consumer pressure groups in the
Nevertheless, Jacobson points out that, for all the
consensus among the major food manufacturers, there are still other labelling schemes in use. He believes that labelling systems that provide information on the
nutritional content of all foods and "not just the better-for-you
foods" will be more beneficial to consumers as they weigh up how to follow
a balanced diet. And the impetus to decide which labelling
system is most effective, Jacobson says, should come from Congress.
"The Smart Choices system is far better than nothing
but it is unclear how it compares to the effectiveness of other
approaches," Jacobson says. "I think that having a symbol - a number,
colour, a star, whatever - on every food is more
useful to consumers than only having it on so-called better-for-you foods. But,
there has not been any study comparing a variety of systems. That's why we've
been urging Congress to fund the
He adds: "I don't care which system it is but I think
we need some evidence that one is significantly better than another. If it
turns out that the better-for-you is just as good as something where there's a
symbol on every food, fine. But let's have some research."
Naturally, over at Hannaford, the supermarket chain believes
its Guiding Stars scheme offers consumers the best guidance. "We support
all of the efforts to give consumers more information but we think the strength
of Guiding Stars is that it goes completely across the store," Hannaford's
Michael Norton tells just-food. "If consumers don't see a star, it means
in almost all circumstances that it doesn't have enough value as one next to it
on the shelf that does have a star. It calls out the most relevant information
and gives consumers a reference point they are familiar with."
Unilever's Balentine says it is
difficult to make comparisons between different systems, including Smart
Choices and Guiding Stars. "Those programmes are
not on-pack programmes; they are programmes
that appear along the price label affixed to a shelf," he says.
One thing this is not fixed is the whole debate around
nutritional labelling. In under two years time, the
2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans will be released, which will no doubt
prompt further revisions to the labelling schemes
live in the market. By that stage, Congress, or indeed the US Food and Drug
Administration, may have become more proactive in the area and we will
certainly know more about the impact that Smart Choices would have had on
consumer behaviour in the
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