Following the Food Standards Agency’s Action Plan on Food Promotions and Children’s Diets (and the recently published Choosing Health White Paper for England), the body is now proposing to introduce a ‘traffic light’ system on food labels to guide consumers into making ‘healthier’ choices.

Using traffic light colours, the labels would offer just three categorisations to consumers: eat freely (green), eat in moderation (amber) and eat sparingly (red). As part of its response to the proposals, the British Cheese Board (BCB) commissioned research into consumers’ understanding of the terms and found that the vast majority of consumers felt that cheese should carry an amber light with 10% saying that the green light – ‘eat freely’ – would be appropriate. Just 17% of consumers thought cheese required a red light. Worryingly, the participating consumers felt that there was little difference between eating ‘sparingly’ versus ‘in moderation’, with one third of adults saying in both cases that they understood this to mean once per day.

The BCB said it welcomes all initiatives based on scientific fact that help consumers make sensible food choices, but said the FSA’s nutrient profiling proposals appear to confuse on a number of issues. Major retailer Tesco, a pioneer of nutrition labelling, announced that they would not be rolling out their own experimental traffic light systems as their customers found it confusing. Instead they are pushing ahead with ‘front of pack’ guideline daily amounts (GDA) labelling.