Obesity is a major and complex challenge for our country. The UK’s food and drink industry is determined to play a full role in tackling that challenge.
Public Health England’s freshly published evidence review Sugar Reduction: Evidence for Action makes a range of recommendations covering price promotion, advertising and product reformulation. What will this renewed focus on policy to reduce sugar consumption mean for Britain’s 5,400 micro and small food and drink producers?
The government has said it will not introduce a sugar tax and we agree. There is insufficient evidence that such a tax would be effective, let alone workable, to justify trialling a policy that would also have an impact on jobs, consumer confidence and business investment.
We think a comprehensive approach – including a partnership between government, industry and others – is the right answer to tackling obesity. There is already a tax on many foods and drinks; it’s called VAT, is charged at 20% and raises billions each year.
Some commentators have also called for companies to list the sugar content of products in “teaspoons” on the front of the packaging. We believe this is a non-starter. Highlighting sugar alone might actively discourage customers from considering the other nutrition information provided. A teaspoon is also not an appropriate unit to measure all nutrients on a label. For instance, a level teaspoon of salt (5g) equates to 85% of a person’s daily reference intake (the new term for guideline daily amount, or GDA) whereas a teaspoon (3.7g) of oil equates to just 5%.
When it comes to food labelling rules are set out in European law. As a result of a recently introduced regulation, the Food Information to Consumers Regulation, nutrition labelling is now mandatory, although front-of-pack nutrition information remaining voluntary. Food and drink companies that have not historically given nutrition information on-pack will not be obliged to provide it until December 2016.
The legislation sets out the information that must be given as well as how it is presented, for example the order of nutrients listed. As part of this, sugars must be listed as “total sugars” in the on-pack nutrition panel.
While we don’t agree with a sugar tax, or additional labelling requirements, FDF is actively engaging with government and other partners to see how our sector can build on the success of previous voluntary initiatives. Small business owners can help tackle obesity by reformulating their products to reduce calories and voluntarily providing front-of-pack nutrition labelling. However, they often don’t have in-house experts who can advise them on reformulation. This can make it harder for them to reduce sugar in products while continuing to meet customer expectation.
Free resources such as the Scottish Food and Drink Federation’s Reformulation for Health and IGD’s Reformulation: a best practice guide toolkits are a good starting point for small business owners considering recipe reformulation. As these guides make clear, increasing the healthiness of your product range not only brings health benefits for consumers, it can also benefit the bottom line.
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