Time for food industry to adopt signposting model

Editor—The BMJ of 4 February contained a full page advertisement for Walkers crisps (“You are changing and so are we”), which purports to show that crisps are becoming healthier.¹ Healthier they may be; healthy they are not.

Why is Walkers making these changes now? A response to consumer demand, as the population is waking up to the fact that a diet based on snacks and fizzy drinks is a fast track to obesity? An attempt to head off threatened controls by the UK government and the European Commission as they attempt to tackle the obesity epidemic?

Why is the food industry so averse to adopting the signposting model developed by the Food Standards Agency and which has undergone rigorous testing?² If industry persists in using a range of indicators that have not been scrutinised by peer reviewed scientific studies then the outcome will be consumer confusion and increases in the rate of obesity. The “Our Health, Our Care, Our Say” white paper published in January showed that people want to keep themselves well and control their own health.³ If the confused messages from the food industry persist we will see not only the 54% rise in type 2 diabetes, 28% rise in hypertension, and 18% rise in heart attacks by 2030 predicted—but a whole lot worse.³

The government and its agents must drive through the recommendations of the Food and Health Action Plan⁴ and Choosing Health⁵ and maintain the resolve to follow through as necessary with regulation at UK and EU levels if sufficient progress is not made by early 2007, to create an environment in which people are able to make healthy informed choices.