Noreen Lannigan, Paris Office, Bord Bia – Irish Food Board
The next ten weeks will define whether the government or industry propositions for the future nutritional labelling in France will be implemented on a voluntary basis as of the 13th December to supplement the EU INCO regulation. From the 26th September to the 4th December, 4 new types of nutritional labels are being tested on 1,200 in 40 retail outlets in four regions in France.
The Nutri-score system, see image below, was developed by Inserm, the French national health and medical research institute, and loosely resembles the current white goods energy labelling. It gives products an A to E rating on a colour-coded scale, green designating “excellent nutritional quality” and dark orange indicating that the product should not be consumed on a regular basis. This is the alternative favoured by the consumer rights magazine, 60 millions Consommateurs.
The Sens label (which stands for simplified nutritional label in French) designed and proposed by the FCD, the French Retailers Federation, is a colour-coded inverted triangle, see image below, that indicates the frequency at which products should be consumed, green equating to “very often” and mauve equating to “rarely or in small quantities”. The difference between this proposed system and the others, from a manufacturers perspective, is that on a four point scale only one of the markers suggests consumers should restrict their consumption of the product.
The third option being tested is the Nutri-couleurs system, see image below, and is the equivalent of the traffic light system used in the UK. It rates the sugar, salt, fat and saturated fat content of products individually and proportionately.
The final alternative currently being tested is called Nutri-repère, see image below, is the only system that doesn’t incorporate a colour coding judgement call. It merely illustrates graphically the RDA information already available on products.
Bord Bia will be visiting some of the 40 stores involved in the trial in the coming weeks, please do not hesitate to contact noreen.lanigan@bordbia.ie if you want any additional information. An update will be circulated in December once the new nutritional label format has been finalised.