Our nutrition campaign

Which? turned the heat up on our nutrition work in 2004 when we launched our ‘Health warning to Government’ report, setting out our twelve demands for tackling obesity and diet-related disease.

The report highlighted research which showed that seven in ten consumers think the Government should be doing more to promote a healthy diet.

What we’ve already achieved:

Targets: the Government has now set clear goals to reduce obesity in children and adults.

School food: robust Government standards have been set for food in schools.

Nutrition labelling: the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has introduced a traffic light labelling scheme for the front of food packaging to help consumers make healthy choices. This has already been adopted by several food companies. More on traffic light labelling.

Tighter controls on health claims: New EU legislation will stop misleading health and nutrition claims.

Reduction in salt levels: the FSA has set salt reduction targets for the food industry and launched an advertising campaign to warn the public against eating too much salt. See our reports below, and our food shopper’s guide for more information.

In 2007 Which? presented the Government with a report card on its progress. See below for the full scores.

Informing consumers, pressuring industry

Since the launch of the campaign we’ve looked at a number of different food ranges, and at the places where people are choosing and eating food. See below for the full reports.

Our research into ready meals, so-called ‘healthy eating’ ranges and breakfast foods (see below) exposed how consumers can be misled by food packaging and labelling.

When we looked at the foods on offer at tourist attractions around the UK we discovered that it was often really hard for families to make a healthy choice, with ranges dominated by fast food. And our report on eating out showed how difficult it can be to get good quality information when you eat out.

Keeping up the pressure

The FSA has still to set reduction targets for salt and fat. In the meantime Which? wants food companies to work harder at reducing in fat, salt and sugar in foods.

Many food companies are now using traffic light colours to show how much fat, salt and sugar is in food, but we’re campaigning for all food companies to add traffic light colours to the front of packs. We will also be lobbying the European Commission to recommend colour-coded labels when it produces its proposals on front of pack labelling at the end of the year.

Which? is also campaigning to stop irresponsible marketing of food to children to help parents to balance their children’s diets.

More information

School Food Trust More information on the new standards for school food, including information for teachers, caterers and parents.

Salt – is your food full of it? More information on salt in food on the Food Standards Agency’s campaign website.