While developing countries wrestle with how to feed their populations, Europe is struggling with how to get people to eat less.
Nutritional labels on food are intended to supply information, so one might think that the more information, the better the label. But MEPs seemingly disagreed when they voted earlier this year, at the prompting of consumer and health organisations, to reject a proposal from the European Commission to boost the information on food labels.
The proposal would have allowed food manufacturers to claim that their products have “x% less”, sugar or salt than a previous recipe. Under existing rules, which date from 2007, labels can claim to have “reduced” fat, sugar or salt, but only if it has been reduced by more than 30%.
Renate Sommer, a German centre-right MEP who authored the Parliament’s position, said the proposed change “would mislead consumers, and producers would only have used it to boost sales”. Industry association FoodDrinkEurope, however, said it was “difficult to comprehend” why MEPs would vote against a measure that would encourage manufacturers to make nutritional improvements to their food.
The acrimony was indicative of the subject’s sensitivity. What role should government play in encouraging consumers to make healthy eating choices? The idea of taxing unhealthy food products has been tried on a limited scale in countries like Denmark, but this has generally been unpopular with the industry and consumers alike.
The food and drink industry has stressed that consumers should be empowered with information so they can make their own healthy choices. The most obvious way to do this, it says, is through food labelling.
But general agreement that a common European market should have common nutritional labelling has not always been followed by agreement on how that should be achieved. According to a study by the European Food Information Council published earlier this year, food packages in Europe frequently carry some form of nutrition information (85% on the back of the pack, 48% on the front), but the presentation of this information varies widely.
In March, MEPs narrowly voted to back a list of 222 permitted health claims on labels in the EU. Health claims not on the list will not be allowed.
Last year, after three years of difficult negotiations, MEPs and member states finally agreed new rules that will bring in standardised EU labels by 2017. In the end, a ‘traffic light’ system of ratings was rejected in favour of ‘guideline daily amount’ (GDA) labels, which show the percentage of calories, sugars, fat, saturated fat and salt that a portion contains. But a compromise was attained only by keeping many provisions vague, leading to confusion from national governments and manufacturers about compliance. The Commission is due to produce guidance on how to implement the legislation in the coming months.
“It was such a highly political debate that many things have been left open to interpretation, and of course the devil is always in the detail,” says Lisa McCooey, deputy director general of FoodDrinkEurope. “Now it is difficult for the enforcement authorities: there are diverging views about how to legally implement this.”
GDA labels have been used by Europe’s main retailers for many years, but the new regulation is imprecise on issues such as where they should be placed. A requirement for front-of-pack displays in the original Commission proposal was taken out by member states, a deletion decried by the European consumers organisation BEUC and John Dalli, the European commissioner for health.
To make matters worse, some countries appear to be going in their own direction on labelling despite the consensus agreed last year. In May the British government launched a consultation, seemingly ignoring the fact that labels had already been agreed at EU level. The consultation includes the possibility of introducing traffic-light labels, which British consumer organisations have said would be easier to understand.
The regulation agreed last year also required labels to indicate whether the vegetable oils in the food come from palm oil. Palm oil plantations have been accused of destroying tropical rainforests. Calls for even more crop origin labelling are likely to increase because of the debate on the indirect land use change caused by biofuel. Country-of-origin labelling has also been harmonised by the new legislation, with common rules on meat coming into force right away and for dairy products in the future. But other areas, such as labelling for alcoholic beverages, were deliberately excluded from the regulation because of the subject’s sensitivity.
The Commission will produce an assessment by the end of 2014 on whether alcoholic drinks should be subject to the same nutritional labelling. Similar analysis will also be produced for trans fats, which have been restricted by some member states.
As the Parliament’s health claims vote shows, the issue of food labelling does not always come down to quantity alone. A fine balance will need to be found between giving consumers enough information to make sound choices, and confusing them with information overload.