A group dedicated to fighting obesity in the province of Quebec is calling on the Canadian government to regulate various nutritional rating systems that it says confuse consumers.
The Quebec Coalition on Weight-Related Problems says logos on packages intended to designate the items as healthy follow different criteria and are not always reliable.
"They have so many logos at the grocery store that they need to have a clear and correct system," Suzie Pellerin, the coalition's director, told CBC News.
A nutritionist, Stéphanie Côté, pointed to a Smart Spot logo on a bag of Lay's potato chips as an example of the confusion taking place. She noted that the product had half the salt of a regular bag of chips but still had 18 grams of fat.
"They're still chips," Ms. Côté said. "It is still a food we should only eat on an occasional basis."
Pepsico defended the use of the Smart Spot logo saying it was intended as a complement to the nutritional information on packaging.
Health Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration, issued a statement that it was "taking concrete steps to protect consumers from misleading and unsubstantial health claims on foods."
Discussion Questions: Have the various nutritional rating systems and logos on packaging made it more or less confusing for consumers to determine the right foods to eat? Does the government or some other body need to step in and establish a single criteria for nutritional ratings of food products?