Nutrition and Health Claims could Mislead Consumers Consumers need to be better protected from misleading nutrition and health claims on food packaging about what is healthy food, a University of Auckland researcher claims. New research undertaken by Dr Stefanie Vandevijvere shows that nutrition and health claims are displayed to influence consumers’ food choices, but current regulations could be further strengthened to ensure consumers are protected and not misled. Vandevijvere is the lead author on a just-published study in the British Journal of Nutrition which assesses the extent and nature of nutrition and health claims on the front-ofpack of ‘healthy’ and ‘less-healthy’ packaged foods in New Zealand. Foods from eight categories were selected from the 2014 Nutritrack database. The internationally standardised International Network for Food and Obesity/Non-Communicable Diseases Research, Monitoring and Action Support (INFORMAS) taxonomy was used to classify claims on packages. The Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion (NPSC) was used to classify products as ‘healthy’ or ‘less healthy’. In total, 7526 products were included, with 3557 (47%) classified as ‘healthy’. Out of 7058 individual claims, the majority (69%) were found on ‘healthy’ products. Cereals displayed the greatest proportion of nutrition and health claims (1503 claims on 564 products), of which one-third were displayed on ‘less-healthy’ cereals. More than one-third of products displayed at least one nutrition claim, and 15% featured at least one health claim on the front-of-pack. Vandevijvere says claims were found on one-third of ‘less-healthy’ products; 26% of those products displayed nutrition claims and seven per cent featured health claims. About 45% of ‘healthy’ products displayed nutrition claims and 23% featured health claims. www.foodtechnology.co.nz 19 The Bill will establish a new regulatory regime separate from those in place for food and medicines It will control low-risk natural health products such as garlic capsules, Echinacea and vitamin pills It is intended to ensure the natural health and supplementary products that consumers use to support their health and wellbeing are safe, true to their health claims and have accurate ingredients labelling The regulations will cover overthe counter products, although products made by a practitioner for an individual patient – such as Chinese medicine or rongoa Maori – are exempt Before a product is sold, it must be notified to the Natural Health and Supplementary Products Authority via the Natural Health and Supplementary Products website All manufacturers of natural health and supplementary products will have to be licensed. “All this cost will be ultimately borne by the New Zealand consumer and will push up the cost of healthy foods and products while leaving the cost of unhealthy food unaffected. How ill-advised is that?”
FT-Oct16
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