Nutritional labelling for promoting healthier food purchasing and consumption

Abstract

Unhealthy eating contributes to increased prevalence of preventable diseases including obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many forms of cancer. In the United Kingdom (UK) alone it is estimated that 70,000 premature deaths could be avoided each year if eating behaviour matched nutritional guidelines (Cabinet Office 2008). These diseases pose a substantial threat to the health of populations and there is increasing concern about the challenges that they will pose to the effective and economic provision of health services (Finkelstein 2003;Foresight 2007). However, changing behaviour to reverse rises in potentially preventable disease is difficult. While many people want to engage in behaviours that promote good health, including healthy eating, people find it difficult to implement and maintain such behaviours (Ogden 2007;Sutton 1998). Eating healthily is made more difficult by an environment in which a great variety of tempting, convenient and cheap ready-to-eat foods are readily available and made highly salient through marketing. These foods are often energy dense (that is high in calories relative to their volume) and highly processed. They are packaged and marketed in ways that fail to help consumers understand their nutritional content.