Health experts have warned that tougher restrictions on misleading labelling of food products may be overturned when food ministers meet today.
With 60 per cent of Australian adults and one in three children currently overweight or obese, the government has been scrambling to find ways to improve education surrounding eating habits and lifestyle.
It is currently working on a mandatory front-of-pack labelling scheme for packaged foods, and has tightened restrictions on claims such as “low fat,” “high fibre,” and “light.”
But food ministers are now considering relaxing the rules around unsubstantiated nutritional claims, leading heart and cancer experts to launch a last-minute appeal yesterday.
The New Zealand and Victorian governments are apparently fighting to get rid of a proposed trans-Tasman standard which would require official assessment of food claims made on labels prior to them being sold.
But chief executive if the Cancer Council, Ian Olver, has slammed the suggestions, saying it “could be disaster at a tine when we are urgently encouraging consumers to make healthier food choices.”
He believes consumers should have piece of mind that any nutritional claims made on labels have been assessed and found to be accurate, whild chief executive of the National Heart Foundation of Australia, Lyn Roberts, said relaxing the rules would damage all progress that has been made in educating Australians about cardiovascular disease and other obesity-related medical conditions.
''Now we are at serious risk of going backwards, with an obesity epidemic and an unprecedented proliferation of packaged foods making claims of a health benefit,'' Dr Roberts said.
In May the National Heart Foundation of Australia found that if everyone reduced their salt intake by 3 grams per day, 6 000 lives could be saved every year.
Obesity-related conditions including heart disease and diabetes are costing Australia over $8 billion a year in health care and lost productivity.
While the government works on developing regulations around labelling and health, a report in March found that labels such as “reduced salt,” or “low in salt,” made consumers experience a less enjoyable taste, even if the product was not actually low in salt.
A Deakin University study, which recruited 50 participants to taste soups with the same salt content, but it labelled some as “reduced salt.”
Those labelled as low sodium actually had the same salt content as the other soups, but participants reported that they found them less tasty.
Do you think nutritional claims should be regulated?