Communicating healthier food choice; nutrition labelling and health claims
Dr Charo Hodgkins, University of Surrey will deliver this talk entitled 'Communicating healthier food choice; nutrition labelling and health claims'.
Recent years have witnessed an increasing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease due to lifestyle changes that include reduced physical activity and a shift to more energy dense diet. In developed countries there is a ready supply of processed or pre-prepared foods which now constitute a significant proportion of the population’s diet and many of these are energy dense and high in risk nutrients such as saturated fat, sugar and salt.
With the mandatory requirement of nutrition labelling for all packaged foods from 2016 (Food Information Regulation (FIR) EC No 1169/2011), the provision of information on packaged foods is seen as having the potential to support informed choice by the consumer and to simultaneously impact on the food environment by encouraging food producers to voluntarily improve the health of the products they produce. Nutrition and health claims often exist on pack in conjunction with nutrition labelling, and are also seen as having the potential to guide consumers to healthier food choices whilst stimulating healthier food innovation and competitiveness within Europe.
The question is ‘To what extent can nutrition labelling and health claims achieve these expectations?’ In this talk I will share with you some of our research in the Food, Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre that has contributed to this domain.
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