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Fiona: Junk Food Ploy to Fatten Profits

Posted on: Saturday, 11 February 2006, 06:00 CST

By FIONA PHILLIPS

IN THE week that C4 showed us the Half-Ton Man, some of the country's largest food companies say they will put health labels on their bestselling brands.

It also comes in the week that Walkers crisps ran their cutesy, caring advert telling us that they'd found a new lower-fat oil to fry their spuds in, and that they've reduced their salt content by 50 per cent, all while retaining the taste. All for the good of our health, of course.

Anyway, by spring the likes of Walkers, Dairylea, Shredded Wheat and Kit Kat will proudly sport labels declaring their nutritional value.

They'll tell you how many calories, and how much sugar, salt, saturated fat and fat a serving of each of them contains.

It'll also tell you what proportion of the guideline daily amounts (GDAs) of each nutrient there are in a serving.

In other words, we'll all be just as confused in the supermarket as we are now. And besides, who is not aware that a packet of crisps and a Kit Kat offer very little in the way of nutritional content?

And don't go thinking food manufacturers are doing it for our health. If they were that concerned they'd have done it long before obesity rates spiralled out of control.

They've been forced to change, and guard their revenue, because we've changed our eating habits, thanks to a dietary revolution led by the likes of Gillian McKeith and intense pressure from the government and the media.

It all smacks of panic measures. Just look at McDonald's - following the avalanche of negative publicity after the transmission of Super Size Me, a documentary which proved that living on a diet of McDonald's supersize meals actually causes bodily harm, they've spruced up their menu.

They've got fruit boxes, organic milk, bagels, but they've also got "Will that be large fries, sir?" - proving that they're still training staff to keep maximum money coming in.

Our food companies, of course, could have waited until the Food Standards Agency finalised its proposals on labelling before they announced that they were going ahead with their own scheme.

The FSA is expected to recommend a traffic-light system, which basically tells us that red is a bad food and green is good. PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps, says: "The food industry won't sign up to traffic lights, but it will to GDAs". Presumably because most of the stuff it produces would register red on a traffic-light system.

And don't just take it from me. The Consumers' Association and the National Heart Forum criticised the new plans by asking: "Could this be because the scheme most likely to be approved by government would affect these companies' sales and profits?"

Is the Pope a Catholic?

Source: Daily Mirror

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