Sanitarium Releases New Food Labelling System

MEDIA RELEASE Tuesday 5th April 2011

Sanitarium Releases New Food Labelling System To Help Kiwis Make Healthy Choices

A report detailing an innovative new food labelling system that highlights positive as well as negative nutrients and recommendations on how often a food should be eaten, has been released by Sanitarium Health & Wellbeing today in response to the current review of food labelling.

The Healthy Eating System is a response to the recent Blewett Food Labelling Law and Policy recommendations which proposes front of pack traffic light labelling, similar to that already in place in Europe. This form of traffic light labelling identifies total fat, saturated fat, sodium and sugar content for manufactured food products.

While Sanitarium welcomes the review, it is concerned that the proposed Traffic Light Labelling may not achieve the desired outcomes in helping consumers make informed food choices. The company encourages more debate and new concepts to be considered in the review.

"The aim of any front of pack labelling should be to help improve eating habits in line with other government initiatives," said Sanitarium's General Manager, Pierre van Heerden. "We have developed and researched a concept that does that. It goes beyond ranking individual food nutrients and provides additional recommendations on the best way to incorporate a range of foods into your diet.

"Profiling the combination of both positive and negative nutrients enables the Healthy Eating System to more effectively provide information to assist in changing eating habits of New Zealanders. By positively changing eating habits, there is the potential to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases associated with poor diet choices."

The Healthy Eating System gives a rating on the positive aspects of a particular food product, for instance the proportion of protein, fibre and wholefood such as fruit, vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Like European Traffic Light Labelling, it also rates nutrients associated with chronic disease - namely saturated fat, sodium, total and added sugar.

Unlike other systems, the Healthy Eating System advises how often a food should be eaten with recommendations to "Eat Often", "Eat Occasionally", or "Eat Sparingly".

Sanitarium as a company is dedicated to encouraging people to eat a healthy diet. "Food is more than just nutrients, food is a social occasion, a time to share and it is important that people are able to enjoy the food they eat without feeling confused," said Sanitarium's Nutrition Service Manager, Cherry Downing.

Ms Downing said research shows consumers find current food labelling, including nutrition information panels, front of pack claims and endorsements confusing.

"We would like to see a system that considers both the desirable food components and the less desirable ones and builds on consumer understanding about food and its nutrients" she said. "The Healthy Eating System assists people in making conscious decisions about the foods that they consume, in line with the New Zealand Food & Nutrition Guidelines that advocate for people to eat a variety of nutritious foods from each of the major food groups each day."

Sanitarium has been working on this system for the last two years, and has released it along with consumer research that compares its effectiveness to the European Traffic Light LabelIing system, generally preferred by public health advocates, and the Daily Intake Guide, advocated by many in the food industry in New Zealand and Australia.

According to research, when presented with all three options, the overwhelming consumer preference was for the new Healthy Eating System with almost two thirds of people (65%) preferring it, finding it easier to understand and more useful.

The research also showed the new system did not appear to be confusing or difficult to understand for high-risk or marginal groups (based on analyses by ancestry, education levels, gender or health levels), important for public health equity.

In releasing the Healthy Eating System research, Sanitarium has called on key stakeholders associated with the issue of food labelling to consider the important design aspects of Front-of-Pack Labelling systems and the clear public health benefits a well-designed and policy-aware system could offer.

Sanitarium has retained no intellectual property rights on the Healthy Eating System and is committed to freely sharing the system in the interests of better public health.

Sanitarium General Manager Pierre van Heerden said that empowering New Zealanders to make informed food choices is consistent with the company's enduring commitment to health and wellbeing.

"As a major food manufacturer we believe we have a responsibility to work with the public health system to provide food products that support New Zealanders to live healthier lives. The more people understand about the foods they are eating the easier it is to make healthy choices," said Mr van Heerden. -Ends-

Released on behalf of Sanitarium by Porter Novelli. For further information or to arrange an interview please contact Kyra Holland, Porter Novelli, 09 6320512, 021827959, Kyra@porternovelli.co.nz

Examples of the Healthy Food System as applied to a range of foods: [cid:image001.png@01CBEE1F.0DF6DC30][cid:image007.png@01CBEE1F.0DF6DC30][cid:image015.png@01CBEE25.E65B39D0][cid:image009.png@01CBEE1F.0DF6DC30] BACKGROUNDER: FRONT-OF-PACK LABELLING KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

In March 2009 Sanitarium commissioned independent research* by The Leading Edge to test each of the three Front of Pack Labelling (FoPL) proposals, in isolation and then against each other. These included the Healthy Eating System, the Traffic Light LabelIing system and the Daily Intake Guide (DIG), advocated by many in the food industry in New Zealand and Australia. The research was designed to evaluate the relative merits of the competing systems in the eyes of grocery buyers.

* When presented with all three systems simultaneously, the overwhelming preference was for the new Healthy Eating System, with 65% of people preferring it, compared to 24% preferring Traffic Lights and 11% preferring DIG.

* Support for the Healthy Eating System was further found to be consistent across education, health attitudes and multi-cultural backgrounds.

* The Healthy Eating System also scored well on ease of understanding - ranking alongside Traffic Lights when scored individually, and outranking both Traffic Lights and DIG when respondents were asked to say which system they found easiest to understand.

* Similarly, with regard to usefulness of information, The Healthy Eating System ranked alongside Traffic Lights when scored individually and outperformed both other systems when respondents were asked to choose which system they found most useful.

* Results showed the DIG system is not as easily interpreted as Traffic Lights and the Healthy Eating System, with only 54% of respondents able to correctly identify the healthiest food using the DIG system, compared with 90% using the Healthy Eating System and 86% with Traffic Lights.

* Likewise, only 62% of respondents could identify the least healthy food using the DIG system, compared with 83% for Traffic Lights and 80% for Healthy Eating System.

* The research found the Healthy Eating System is likely to have a much stronger impact on eating frequencies than the DIG system.

* For the most healthy product example presented, 58% of respondents were able to correctly identify it as a product they should be eating either "everyday" or "a few times a week" using the DIG system, compared with 72% for Traffic Lights and 82% for the Healthy Eating System.

* A further 24% of respondents were "unsure" about how often to eat the product when using the DIG system, compared with only 6% who were "unsure" using the Healthy Eating System.

* According to the research, more than one system in the marketplace would make trying to choose healthy foods more difficult for consumers, as respondents found the information in each system difficult to compare across systems.

* For instance, when simultaneously shown all three systems applied to the same product example, and asked "Which of these foods would be the most healthy?" only nine percent of respondents correctly identified that the foods were all the same

*An 18 minute online questionnaire was conducted with 855 people across Australia who identified themselves as the main grocery buyer of their household.

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