The High Council for Public Health (HCSP) has issued its opinion on the new regulations to facilitate consumer information on the nutritional quality of foods. Chips, yoghurt, prepared meals … Industrial food products must display a 5 color code to inform consumers of their composition and those which are most favorable to health. These 5-color codes will be used to give consumers the information they need to make informed dietary decisions for themselves and their families. They can easily compare the products with each other.
The 5-color code allows you to display a nutritional score (good or bad). To understand how the 5-color nutritional code was perceived and understood, 14,230 adults had to interpret several labels, using the tricolor code used in the United Kingdom, that of the Netherlands or even the Recommended Daily Benchmarks and the 5-color code.
They then had to answer a questionnaire to classify the different food products. The study’s findings showed that women seemed to store food better, and those at risk (overweight, obese, elderly, low-educated) had more difficulty.
The analyzes of the questionnaires showed that an information logo multiplies by 12 the nutritional understanding of foods. And that the 5-color code multiplies by more than 20 the ability to store products properly compared to the absence of a logo.
“In general, a better understanding of labels favors their use,” write the authors, quoted by PourquoiDocteur. It therefore seems crucial to choose the labeling which allows a good understanding by the most vulnerable sub-groups ”.
“This color-coding system makes it possible to quickly identify the nutritional quality of supermarket products, but it also offers the possibility of comparing products of different brands to favor, for example, the less fat and less sweet cereal brands or Bolognese lasagna or pizzas that have the best nutritional profile, ”recalls in the press release, Professor Didier Jourdan, chairman of the HCSP prevention commission.
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