A promise to introduce a single, simple food labelling scheme this year, ending the contradictory and confusing systems, will form the centrepiece of the government's anti-obesity drive today.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has commissioned a review of labelling. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, believes he has set up a process that will persuade the warring supermarkets, including Tesco, to abide by the outcome.
The anti-obesity strategy will also introduce planning guidance advising councils not to allow fast food outlets to be opened close to schools or parks. Johnson will also announce that the review of the proposed ban on pre-watershed junk food advertising will be brought forward, with an announcement expected in the summer. In the UK, two-thirds of adults and a third of children are overweight or obese.
Ed Balls, the children's secretary, said yesterday that cookery classes will become compulsory in schools.
Previous attempts to introduce a single labelling system have been thwarted by different supermarkets backing different schemes. Tesco has refused to back a traffic-light system, fearing consumers will shun food with red labels for salt, sugar or fat. It uses monochrome signposts based on guideline daily amounts (GDA) and claims this system is more informative.
Sainsbury's uses a traffic-light system, favoured by the FSA, while Asda and Waitrose back a hybrid system.
Tesco chairman, David Reid, has agreed to sit on the Nutrition Strategy Steering Group, overseeing the £500,000 labelling research, and ministers believe his involvement ensures that Tesco will feel obliged to abide by its findings.
Johnson also believes he has won EU support for moves to allow Britain to introduce its own labelling system.
He is expected today to urge the food industry to get its act together, saying: "I want to see our major producers and retailers agree with the FSA on a single labelling system, easy to understand and best able to support us in making informed healthy choices about the food we eat."
Shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said he accepted that "current labelling practices are fragmented and confusing". But he claimed "the traffic-light labelling system which was advocated by the government in 2004 added to this confusion because it is based on the concept of good or bad food, when what matters is whether a diet is good or bad. It also does not work in practice. If a wholemeal bread roll is low in sugar, moderate in fats and high in salt, would it merit a green, amber or red light?" He said he favoured a combined traffic-light and GDA system.
Tesco last night denied it would be bound in advance by the outcome of the FSA-commissioned research and said it remained committed to GDA, which it said was supported by most retailers and food manufacturers as scientifically proven.
Balls said all teenagers will receive cooking classes and schools will advise parents on what to include in their children's lunchboxes. He also disclosed plans to rebuild kitchen classrooms in 15% of schools and allocate £2.5m to ensure pupils on free school meals don't have to pay for cookery lesson ingredients.
