Studies

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Scientific evidence supports traffic light colours

16.02.2010

The combination of traffic light colours and text is crucial to the consumer’s ability to understand nutritional information. This was the clear conclusion of the most comprehensive comparative study on consumers’ understanding of various food labelling systems that has been carried out to date.

This study was commissioned by the governmental Food Standards Agency (FSA) of the UK. Of the nutrition labelling systems compared, two were found to be significantly easier to understand: either a combination of text (high/medium/low) and traffic light colours (red/amber/green) or a combination of text, traffic light colours and additional GDA percentage values. The food industry’s model with percentage values using the GDA system failed in the comparative study – a fact that makes the industry’s opposition to traffic light labelling even more irresponsible.

Legislative procedure is ignoring study results

foodwatch is demanding that these scientific findings be taken into consideration in the current legislative procedures on the EU level. Currently policy-makers in the EU are considering a draft regulation that would ultimately forbid the use of traffic light labelling. In other words, not only would this new legislation fail to introduce the food labelling system that has been proven superior – it would even prohibit all EU Member States from using this system on the national level.

"EUFIC" and "FLABEL": Studies from the industry lobby

The industry is also using scientific evidence for its argumentation – although it’s certainly worth taking a closer look at the background of the quoted studies EUFIC and FLABEL, some of whose findings have not even been published. EUFIC describes itself as follows: "EUFIC is supported by companies of the European food and drinks industries, and receives project funding from the European Commission. It is governed by a Board of Directors which is elected from member companies. Current EUFIC members are: Barilla, Cargill, Cereal Partners, Coca-Cola HBC, Coca-Cola, Danone, DSM Nutritional Products Europe Ltd., Ferrero, Kraft Foods, McCormick Foods, Mars, McDonald's, Nestlé, Novozymes, PepsiCo, Pfizer Animal Health, Procter & Gamble, Südzucker, Unilever, and Yakult." In other words, the Who’s Who of international food companies.

FLABEL is also funded through EUFIC, whereas here additional partners have been brought on board – for example the British retail chain Tesco, who has been a fierce opponent of traffic light labelling in the UK for many years.

FSA study is recognised as "excellent work"

OK, but what about the validity of the FSA study? The nutritional scientist Julia Lohscheidt under the scientific direction of Professor Ingrid-Ute Leonhäuser from the Institute for Nutritional Sciences at the Justus-Liebig University of Gießen provided foodwatch with an analysis of the study’s quality. In short: The FSA study – in terms of its methodology and validity – “can be recognised as excellent work.” 

The bottom line: Traffic light opponents are financing their own anti-traffic-light studies and ignoring independent scientific evidence. foodwatch says: Policy-makers should not take the results of industry-funded studies into consideration.

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