There is a new food label scheme (front of pack) to help people build a healthy diet.  This tells consumers how much energy (calories), sugar, fat, saturates and salt one serving of the product provides. It also gives the percentages of Guideline Daily Amounts (GDAs) for each of these.

A previous initiative by the UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) recommended a traffic light scheme to show whether a product is low (green), medium (amber) or high (red) for fat, saturates, sugar and salt.

My view is that a combined panel is more likely to help people build a healthy diet than either of the above panels alone. This is because the red/amber/green approach is likely to be more quickly assessed by busy shoppers at point-of-purchase than is a list of percentages.  Even so, they would need to assess which of the five items is the most important for them!

Tinuviel Software’s CARAT program (http://www.tinuvielsoftware.com/carat.htm) will calculate and print either panel.  Users of this program can also choose to print a combined panel. So now, food companies have no excuse for not helping people to build a healthy diet.