• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Food Databanks

Food Databanks

Providing food composition data to underpin food and health research in the UK

  • Nutrients
  • Bioactives
  • Projects
  • Labelling for Food
  • News & Blog
    • Blog
    • FDNC Newsletter
  • About Us
  • Publications
  • Help & FAQs

Traffic light label colours, (portion) size matters!

You are here: Home / News / Traffic light label colours, (portion) size matters!

11th October 2017 by Food Databanks

This nice piece in Cosmopolitan shows that buyers are getting more savvy on understanding labels and are beginning to spot when producers may manipulate traffic light colours by choosing to use a non-standard portion size. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/diet-nutrition/a12040602/food-nutrition-labels-misleading-serving-size/

We double checked the orange juice information using our labelling calculator, and agree with the conclusions in the article, a serving of the whole bottle contents would give a different traffic light label. There is nothing illegal in this, but producers watch out, the consumer may be on to you!However, this is may not be the all the story, there are many more things to consider in the area of portion size and traffic light colours. So, sticking with the orange juice example here are a few we thought of:

• The manufacturer produces many different volumes of the same drink, they were probably not attempting to be misleading, but saving themselves a lot of bother by just putting the same portion size on all bottle sizes.

• It may, however, be misleading if the consumer is trying to reduce their sugar intake. Without checking portion size, they may assume it is lower in sugar due to the orange traffic light colour. Drinking more than 150ml and they are in the ‘red’.

• As part of a healthy balanced diet, an adult’s reference intakes (“RIs”) for total sugars per day is 90g, a 300ml bottle of the drink is 27g, so the consumer that leaves a nice 63g, pass the chocolate…

• The average portion size of orange juice according to the Food Standards agency is 160ml, so the manufactures estimation is reasonable.

• Don’t always assume red is unhealthy, this is a fruit juice, it has healthy vitamins in it and the sugar is natural.

P.S Since sugar reduction is a very complex issue, we are not attempting to venture into the arena of healthy or unhealthy sugars with this blog, we shall save that for another time.

Further reading:
Original Cosmo article http://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/body/diet-nutrition/a12040602/food-nutrition-labels-misleading-serving-size/

The Association of UK dieticians has a nice fact sheet on portion sizes https://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/portionsizesfoodfactsheet.pdf

Try our label calculator yourself for free here https://www.nutritics.com/welcome/nis

FSA portion size book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Portion-Sizes-Maff-Handbook/dp/0112429610

News food labelling,  juice,  orange,  sugar

Primary Sidebar

Online Food Composition Datasets

UK Composition of Foods (CoFID)
Searchable website
UK Composition of Foods (CoFID) Excel and user guide
Labelling for Food
eBASIS
Non-Nutrients bioactive compounds Database
FoodWasteEXplorer
Food waste compositional database

About the Quadram Institute

The Quadram Institute is at the forefront of a new interface between food science, gut biology and health. It will develop solutions to worldwide challenges in food-related disease and human health, and bring together the interdisciplinary teams and work with appropriate international organisations to address these major issues.

For general enquiries

fdnc@quadram.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1603 251431

Quadram Institute Bioscience
Norwich Research Park
Colney Lane
Norwich
NR4 7UA

Footer

Contact Us

Ciara Carthy
PA & National Capability Support
Tel: +44 (0)1603 251431
fdnc@quadram.ac.uk

Quadram Institute Bioscience
Norwich Research Park, Norwich
NR4 7UQ UK

Privacy and Cookies

Sign up to our mailing list


Copyright © 2021 · Business Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in