In the U.K., Sainsbury's supermarkets has pioneered a traffic light labeling scheme where healthy foods receive green labels and unhealthy foods are tagged with red labels. The color coding scheme indicates levels of fat, sugar and salt per 100g.
Is it working? Sainsbury has revealed that sales of breakfast cereals with "greens" and "ambers" are growing twice as fast as total breakfast cereals. The supermarket group also noted that frozen ready meals with no "reds" on their labeling are showing annual growth of 7%. This contrasts with a 35 % decline in frozen meals with reds on their labels. Manufacturers, who have no control over the labeling, are being forced to rethink ingredients.
Source: The Independent.
This item was from the July 27, 2006 issue of Global Packaging Minute , a monthly read of "hard-hitting and off-beat packaging news from around the world" edited by Packaging World associate publisher Jim Chrzan.
