Woke up the other morning to some local government minister for something-or-other getting very upset over food labelling on the radio.
There is, apparently, a new government initiative (in the UK) to clearly label foodstuffs with nutritional content, especially salt and fat, to enable people to make healthy choices over what they eat. This is because there’s an obesity epidemic, along with high levels of high blood pressure and heart disease, and it’s been predicted that it’s going to cripple the National Health Service, yada, yada, yada.
The minister objected to food labelling, because foods such as cheese would be identified as high fat and salt. People would therefore be dissuaded from eating it.
The information is quoted in very small text on the back of a packet, per 100g or 100ml of product. The new labelling is a big, brightly coloured circle on the front of the product, saying how many colories, how much fat and how much salt is in that product, per packet or serving.
There are still quite a lot of people in the UK who struggle with reading and numeracy, or can’t be bothered to work out what’s in their food, so the government are trying to combat the obesity epidemic by making it as easy as possible to identify what’s in your food.
