New food labelling system launched The new labelling system, which is launched today, displays "traffic light" colour coding along with levels of fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt and calories, allowing shoppers to compare products directly against one another. Health problems linked to being obese or overweight are thought to cost the NHS more than £5 billion each year, but small dietary changes can significantly reduce the chance of developing serious health conditions such as heart disease According to a 2011 report 61 per cent of adults in England or overweight or obese, one of the highest levels among developed countries, along with a third of 10 to 11-year-olds and almost a quarter of four to five-year-olds. Some supermarkets already incorporate colour-coded labelling onto their packaging but they display it in different ways, leading to confusion among some shoppers about which foods are healthiest. The new system sets out a single system for traffic light coding and replaces Guideline Daily Amounts with "Reference Intakes" which reveal what proportion of the maximum daily intake of fat or sugar, for example, is contained in a 100g portion. Until now, packages listed nutritional information according to different portion sizes, meaning a product with a higher figure could simply be larger and not necessarily less healthy than another. Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, said: "High levels of diet-related chronic diseases in the UK, including heart disease, mean it's essential we have clear and consistent food labelling so people can make healthy choices." Richard Lloyd, executive director of Which?, added: "We hope that more food manufacturers will join the scheme so that their labels will be consistent and comparable to those on the front of the retailers' own packs."