GDA Labels: Why not colour code?
Food retailers, caterers and manufacturers across Europe
have supported the use of Guideline Daily Amount (GDA)
labelling as an objective way of providing nutritional
information and helping consumers construct a healthy,
balanced diet through developing their nutritional
knowledge.
A key strength of the GDA scheme is that it is based on
facts and does not set out to demonise products that
should form part of any healthy, balanced diet.
GDA labels provide nutritional facts on a per portion
basis about the food in a pack and show how it would
contribute to the diet whereas traffic lights offer an
assessment about whether 100g of that product is high,
medium or low for a particular nutrient without reference
to the total diet or the actual serving size. The GDA
scheme also provides clear information about calories –
vital in the fight against obesity – which is something that
is not easily colour coded.
So we have chosen to use numbers instead of colours
because it's a more accurate way for consumers to
tell if a portion of a particular food contains a higher or
lower amount of a certain nutrient, compared to another
product.
This supports our belief that the key to making consumers
more food literate lies in encouraging them to look at
what's inside the packs they are buying and think about
this in the context of their whole diet.
More information
Download the full PDF report: GDA Labels: Improving the food
literacy of consumers - pdf | 375kb
Last reviewed: 26 Apr 2010