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Parents have different demands

New Zealand parents appear to be much happier about current food labelling than their Australian counterparts according to the Food Industry Group’s executive director, Vicki Hamilton.

In a NZ survey just carried out, Hamilton said that 94% of parents agreed they had high levels of information about the products they buy with 90% agreeing they could check whether the product is healthy or not.

She said it was therefore somewhat surprising that some Australian research, run by The Parents Jury, found the opposite and that the ‘majority of Australian parents are unhappy with current food labelling”.

Hamilton said the Food Industry Group’s research was independently carried out across 600 households with 62% of the households having children from pre-school to intermediate and 38% of households with mainly teens and adult children still at home.

She said the research also showed that while children may have some influence over their parents’ food selection there are no indications that the children are dominating the decision process or manipulating parents into inappropriate food choices.

Hamilton said the main concern for New Zealand parents in the food area was that healthy food is kept affordable.

She also noted that the Parent’s Jury findings indicated that the majority of Australian parents wanted a ‘traffic light’ nutrition labelling system on packs. However, this finding also appeared to conflict with other independent Australian research which showed that 85% of Australians found the current Daily Intake counter on front of packs as being very informative “providing the right amount of information” and with 79% of respondents stating they clearly understood the information.

For further information contact:

Vicki Hamilton

Executive Director

Food Industry Group

www.fig.org.nz

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