Food and drink giants will today launch the opening salvo in an unprecedented battle over nutritional information as they unveil details of a campaign to promote a scheme rejected by the government's food watchdog. The £4m publicity drive will promote a system which shows the percentage of "guideline daily amounts" (GDAs) of fat, salt and sugar contained in food products, rather than the "traffic light" warnings backed by the Food Standards Agency.
The industry's favoured scheme suffered a fresh setback yesterday after the food and farming alliance Sustain said research showed that 47% of adults lacked the numerical skills to understand what the labels meant. The organisation questioned why the industry was spending millions of pounds and potentially confusing consumers by promoting "an unclear and unhelpful" labelling system.
The Guardian revealed last week that the FSA is to launch a series of TV adverts this month telling shoppers how to follow a red, amber and green traffic light labelling system on the front of food packs, which is designed to tackle Britain's obesity epidemic.
But a coalition of 21 major manufacturers and three retailers say the traffic light scheme would discourage shoppers from buying products carrying red labels, which will include many cereals. Instead, their labels show the recommended GDAs for sugar, fat, saturated fat, salt and calories. The food industry's GDA campaign director, Jane Holdsworth, said: "We have made it simple to compare what's inside thousands of everyday foods so you can choose what best suits your diet."
Masterfoods, the company behind Mars Bars, Snickers and Bounty, said yesterday that its chocolate bars would display calorie counts on wrappers.
The issue of food labels has divided the industry. Supporters of the GDA system include Cadbury Schweppes, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Danone, Masterfoods, PepsiCo, Unilever, Tesco, Somerfield and Morrisons. The Food Standards Agency's traffic light scheme is backed by Sainsbury's, Waitrose, the Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Asda. Yesterday, Sustain published research showing that almost half of adults and most children lacked the mathematical skills needed to interpret the new labels.
Sustain's children's food campaign spokesman, Richard Watts, said: "We are very disappointed that the food industry is spending millions of pounds promoting an unclear and unhelpful food labelling system. Powerful companies such as Kellogg's have been vigorously lobbying MPs to support this unclear and unhelpful system, which will do nothing to help stop the rise of childhood obesity, but will help to protect their profits."
Chris Wermann, communications director at Kellogg's, said GDA labelling would provide "consistency and easily accessible information for consumers". Waitrose said yesterday it plans to extend traffic light labels to all recommended food categories on its own label brands by the end of March. A spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency said: "Our independent published consumer research is clear - it's the use of traffic light colours that best helps consumers to make healthier choices when shopping."
