A new national standard was recently introduced in an effort to reduce misleading ‘health’ claims by food businesses. With various products currently making false claims of health and nutrition, many Australian consumers will breathe a sigh of relief at the introduction of this new law.
When it comes to health-conscious grocery shopping it can be hard to tell which products are actually good for you. The New Standard for Nutrition, Health and Related Claims (which became law on January 18th) is there to help consumers out.
Australian food businesses have been given three years to meet the requirements set out by the standard, and will then be required to meet a specific set of criteria before making claims like ‘low fat’ or ‘gluten free’. For example, in order to claim that a food is ‘low fat’ it must contain no more than 1.5g of fat per 100ml of liquid food, or 3g per 100g of solid food.
It’s hard enough to stick to a healthy diet without having to worry about deceptive packaging and hidden sugar and sodium content.
The overall aims of the new standard are to reduce the risk of misleading and deceptive claims about food, expand the range of permitted health claims, and to encourage the industry to innovate and give consumers a wider range of healthy food choices. In short, the law should make it simpler and more appealing to shop for healthy food.
In order to adhere to the new standard, many established food businesses will be required to alter their recipes. Uncle Tobys, for example, have already made changes in order for all forty four of their breakfast cereals to meet nutrition requirements and make legitimate health claims.
The brand’s Nutrition Manager, Nilani Sritharan, announced that the recipe changes mean that the Uncle Tobys range is now using 67 tonnes less sugar and 2.5 tonnes less sodium, while adding 193 tonnes more wholegrain and 13 tonnes more fibre each year.
Traditionally, breakfast cereals, which dominate a whole aisle at the local supermarket, have been particularly difficult to differentiate between. It is encouraging to know that their ‘low sugar!’ and ‘low gi!’ slogans will soon be easier to trust.
