Food Guidelines May Be Crossing the Line
Based on a sample of 120 foods representative of the U.K. diet, experts at Oxford University have calculated that just seven percent of foodstuffs would be forbidden from claiming they were nutritious and 40 percent from claiming they were healthy, according to research cited by consumer rights organization Which?.
Products such as jam doughnuts, custard tarts, pork sausages and ready salted crisps could allegedly use health and nutrition messages on their products under European Commission (EC) proposals.
An EC regulation on nutrition and health claims adopted in May 2006 was intended to "stop consumers being misled into buying less healthy products they thought were good for them." Nutrition claims would be legally defined, with substantiated health claims.
But Which? now believes that pressure from European governments looking to promote their national products, regardless of how healthy they are, have diluted the Commission's criteria. These, it says, are now "unscientific and fundamentally flawed."
Senior public affairs officer Colin Walker said, "The U.K. Government needs to get these proposals thrown out and completely rewritten. The adoption of these criteria will weaken the fight against obesity and poor diets doing far more harm than good."
For the skeptical, one case in point may be a study by Wrigley asserting that chewing gum can improve teenagers' academic performance, according to nutraingredients-usa.com. Researchers at the company's Science Institute found that students who chewed gum showed an increase in standardized math test scores with better final grades than those of others who didn't chew gum.
Wrigley has conducted a series of projects "to learn more about the potential health and wellness benefits of chewing gum." In this case, the authors concluded that it might "be a cost-effective and easily implemented method to increase student performance."
Focusing on alertness and concentration, situational stress, weight management and appetite, and oral health, the Wrigley Institute's executive director claimed, "This study adds to the growing body of evidence that supports the benefits of chewing gum for various cognitive performances."
Discussion questions: Have rules concerning health claims lost their effectiveness in the U.S. as they apparently have in the European Union? How can retailers help consumers to really understand what is and is not healthy?