BANT 2024 Election Manifesto – A Call for Change! – Current labelling loopholes often leave consumers misled about the true nutritional value and high fat, high salt and high sugar (HFSS) content of the products they buy. Food labels are meant to inform and make purchasing decisions easier, but there is more confusion than ever before.
BANT calls for food labeling legislation that ensures consistent reporting of all ingredients in the interest of consumers.
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) defines a food label as “providing at-a-glance nutritional information to enable consumers to make informed food choices, balance their diet and control their energy (calorie) intake.”
However, the FSA’s 2021 report indicates that the reliability and interpretability of nutrition labelling systems is low, stating that “consumers may be very skeptical of the labelling system and whether it provides accurate information on nutritional details, and this may also have a cultural dimension.”
So food labels are not doing the job they were designed to do. Why? Because they can’t be trusted.
A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says ultra-processed foods, alcohol, tobacco and fossil fuels are responsible for up to 2.7 million deaths across Europe each year, and calls for “tougher regulations to curb the power of the industries”. The report calls on political powers to aggressively pursue health policies that are regularly “challenged, postponed, weakened or cancelled” by commercial industries.
Food labeling is one policy that is continually under attack from industry.
The lack of uniformity in food labels paves the way for food manufacturers to continue to deceive consumers. The industry continues to use modified starches such as maltodextrin in place of fat, promote “low calorie” claims, and use non-nutritive sweeteners instead of sugar, which are not classified as sugar, even though both perform the same function. This leads consumers to believe they are purchasing a “healthier” alternative and makes it difficult for them to calculate the true glycemic impact (how quickly a food raises blood sugar levels) by reading the food label alone. This is especially important for people with metabolic diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypercholesterolemia, and fatty liver.
BANT calls on political parties to:
● Work towards mandatory food labelling, including clear guidelines for high fat, high salt and high sugar (HFSS) products, to close loopholes that allow manufacturers to pass off non-nutritive sweeteners as “low calorie” healthy alternatives to sugar and modified starches (corn, wheat and potato).
● Introducing a single labelling framework to make it easier for consumers to compare products that all manufacturers must adhere to.
● Update the UK Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) guidelines to align with the World Health Organisation.
Download the full manifesto here or access the flipbook online.
Hippocratic Editorial and the VT team. Send your comments to submissions@hippocraticpost.com.
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