LABEL THE FOOD

Have you heard about The Health Star Rating (HSR) system in New Zealand? Australia also uses the system. It is a voluntary labeling of the food items and it assists consumers in making healthy food choices. The system will eventually become obligatory in these countries. More importantly, it seems that the system works, since a recent report mentions that one in six people have changed their shopping behaviors based on the Health Star Rating.

The same report also mentions that a number of major companies have reformulated their products to make them healthier and achieve a higher star rating (e.g., reducing salt, sugar and saturated fat, and increasing fiber). The system makes the consumer choice easier - instead of reading the list of ingredients and guessing their value, the product is labeled. For example, it is easier to choose between two seemingly identical food products (e.g., two loaves of bread). Although the system has been critiqued by some, I would say it is better to have any labeling than no labeling at all.

Another format for labeling food is the Multiple Traffic Light (MTL) label system that is currently applied in several European countries on a voluntary basis. There is even quibbling about which labeling system is better – the HSR or the MTL. Instead of pondering this question, we should urge the U.S. government to mandate some kind of labeling on our food products. It is one story to have a precipice a few steps away from us and be oblivious of it, and a completely different story to have a warning sign that informs everyone about the precipice ahead. Of course, the adoption of any labeling system will meet resistance (from the food industry, and all the satellites profiting from this industry). Here is what a post on the MTL system and its adoption by the European Union says:  

Bizarrely, several European Union countries are threatening the UK with legal action following the voluntary introduction of MTLs, because they are “clearly influencing consumer choice”. 
 
Therefore, the labeling WORKS!  Some people have said about processed food that “If you do not buy it, they are not going to make it”, but this approach means that we have to educate every single consumer, a daunting task.