Tim Worstall

Food Labels

Simple solution:

The GDA scheme uses labels that show how much a
single portion of processed food contributes towards an adult’s
recommended guideline daily allowance of fat, sugar, calories and salt.

However, the FSA says that the percentages used by the GDA scheme are too difficult for consumers to understand.

"People have difficulty interpreting them when they are rushing around the supermarket," a spokesman said yesterday.

If the state education system taught people to read and write effectively, you know, well enough that Cabinet Ministers sent their children to them, then we wouldn’t have this problem of adult illiteracy.

Just a thought.

In

7 responses

  1. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    Do you know, or care, what the UK’s actual performance on international comparisons of literacy might be?
    (by the way, I have no idea what kind of education system might be able to get a dyslexic, dyspraxic kid to the point where he can calculate percentages on the fly while pushing a supermarket trolley. I think I would be rather scared of such a system).

    Reply
  2. Marcin Tustin Avatar
    Marcin Tustin

    Why do people have to do it at the supermarket? They could just do it when they cook their meals, then change their habits if they care.

    Reply
  3. Oli Avatar
    Oli

    The figures are only of any use when the people reading them have an understanding of diet, foods and how it should all interact!
    When you consider that 20% of the adult population is practically illiterate and don’t get me started on innumerate figures – worrying about labels is small potatoes!

    Reply
  4. JuliaM Avatar
    JuliaM

    “…worrying about labels is small potatoes!”
    Not if it keeps the FSA civil servants in a useless job, it isn’t…

    Reply
  5. john b Avatar
    john b

    Oooh, my old job. Yay.
    1) Most people in the UK have no use for the GDA system even if they are fully numerate and literate: it involves totalling and recording their daily consumption, and the only people who do that are diet obsessives.
    2) Most people in the UK don’t cook their meals in the sense you mean – they either reheat a ready meal or heat a pre-prepared piece of processed meat, some chips and some processed vegetables. UK sales of sweets and chocolate are higher than sales of meat, fish and poultry…
    3) The FSA’s traffic light system does a good job of highlighting the nutritional differences between foods consumed on broadly comparable occasions (ie one ready meal versus another). It isn’t a cure-all, but it will genuinely help people to make healthier food choices.
    Obviously it would be nice if we could address problem 2 as well, but mandating 3 would be a low-cost way of mitigating 2’s effects.

    Reply
  6. Tim Newman Avatar
    Tim Newman

    Do you know, or care, what the UK’s actual performance on international comparisons of literacy might be?
    I don’t, but I’m willing to take a bet that it is heading in the wrong direction, both in absolute terms and relative to most other countries.

    Reply
  7. john b Avatar
    john b

    Tim N – I’m willing to offer you such a bet. £50 says that UK literacy is rising relative to historical standards and to OECD comparators…
    (I’ll accept the point that the difference between the UK and the global median is probably narrowing as educational levels rise in China and India.)

    Reply

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