Food companies fail to agree on new nutrition label in Europe

Trials to highlight calories, fat, sugar, and salt to be abandoned after two years

© The Financial Times Limited 2018

Five of the world’s biggest food companies have abandoned trials aimed at developing a new nutrition labelling scheme for Europe, dealing a blow to efforts to help consumers better understand what is in their food.

Coca-Cola, Mondelez, Nestlé, PepsiCo, and Unilever have been working together for two years on an “Evolved Nutrition Label,” which would have replaced the monochrome labelling system in place in Europe.

The new label sought to use colours from red to green to indicate whether a portion of a given food was high in calories, fat, sugar, or salt.

But after trials in several countries and consultation with academics and consumer groups, the companies could not gain consensus around the new portion-based, colour-based scheme, said Bart Vandewaetere, a Nestlé government affairs executive. […]

Click here to read full article.