1I've still got loads to do for our report on nutritional food labels.
2Me too.
3What did you learn from doing the project about your own shopping habits?
4Well, I've always had to check labels for traces of peanuts in everything I eat because of my allergy.
5But beyond that I've never really been concerned enough to check how healthy a product is.
6This project has actually taught me to read the labels much more carefully.
7I tended to believe claims on packaging like 'low in fat'.
8But I now realise that the 'healthy' yoghurt I've bought for years is full of sugar
9and that it's actually quite high in calories.
10Ready meals are the worst...
11comparing the labels on supermarket pizzas was a real eye-opener.
12Did you have any idea how many calories they contain?
13I was amazed.
14Yes, because unless you read the label really carefully,
15you wouldn't know that the nutritional values given are for half a pizza.
16When most people eat the whole pizza.
17Not exactly transparent is it?
18Not at all.
19But I expect it won't stop you from buying pizza?
20Probably not, no!
21I thought comparing the different labelling systems used by food manufactures was interesting.
22I think the kind of labelling system used makes a big difference.
23Which one did you prefer?
24I liked the traditional daily value system best -
25the one which tells you what proportion of your required daily intake of each ingredient the product contains.
26I'm not sure it's the easiest for people to use but at least you get the full story.
27I like to know all the ingredients in a product -
28not just how much fat, salt and sugar they contain.
29But it's good supermarkets have been making an effort to provide reliable information for customers.
30Yes. There just needs to be more consistency between labelling systems used by different supermarkets,
31in terms of portion sizes, etc.
32The labels on the different brands of chicken flavour crisps were quite revealing too, weren't they?
33Yeah.
34I don't understand how they can get away with calling them chicken flavour
35when they only contain artificial additives.
36I know.
37I'd at least have expected them to contain a small percentage of real chicken.
38Absolutely.
39I think having nutritional food labeling has been a good idea, don't you?
40I think it will change people's behaviour and stop mothers, in particular, buying the wrong things.
41But didn't that study kind of prove the opposite?
42People didn't necessarily stop buying unhealthy products.
43They only said that might be the case.
44Those findings weren't that conclusive and it was quite a small-scale study.
45I think more research has to be done.
46Yes, I think you're probably right.
47What do you think of the traffic-light system?
48I think supermarkets like the idea of having a colour-coded system -
49red, orange or green - for levels of fat, sugar and salt in a product.
50But it's not been adopted universally.
51And not on all products.
52Why do you suppose that is?
53Pressure from the food manufacturers.
54Hardly surprising that some of them are opposed to flagging up how unhealthy their products are.
55I'd have thought it would have been compulsory.
56It seems ridiculous it isn't.
57I know.
58And what I couldn't get over is the fact that it was brought in without enough consultation -
59a lot of experts had deep reservations about it.
60That is a bit weird.
61I suppose there's an argument for doing the research now when consumers are familiar with this system.
62Yeah, maybe.
63The participants in the survey were quite positive about the traffic-light system.
64But I don't think they targeted the right people.
65They should have focused on people with low literacy levels
66because these labels are designed to be accessible to them.
67Yeah.
68But it's good to get feedback from all socio-economic groups.
69And there wasn't much variation in their responses.
70No.
71But if they hadn't interviewed participants face-to-face,
72they could have used a much bigger sample size.
73I wonder why they chose that method?
74Dunno.
75How were they selected?
76Did they volunteer or were they approached?
77I think they volunteered.
78The thing that wasn't stated was how often they bought packaged food -
79all we know is how frequently they used the supermarket.