A new front-of-pack food label that has the support of big brands, health groups and all the major supermarkets was launched yesterday.
Food sold in packaging will be colour coded according to a red, amber and green scheme to show how much fat, saturated fat, salt, sugar and calories it contains.
John Cassidy, managing director of design research company The Big Picture, told Packaging News that the ramifications of the traffic light for the industry could be widespread and designers will need to think how best to integrate a multicoloured block "into their carefully crafted packaging designs".
All the major supermarkets – Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, the Co-operative, Waitrose and Tesco – have announced they will use the label on their products, alongside Mars UK, Nestle UK, PepsiCo UK, Premier Foods and McCain Foods. However, brands such as Cadbury and Coca-Cola have not signed up, stating that they felt the use of guideline daily amounts was a better system.
Cassidy said: "The 'health halo' of brands that have positioned themselves as 'healthy' may be challenged and it's a gamble for those brands who have chosen not to adopt it, like Coca Cola and Kellogg's. Although they may benefit from not having the (potentially negative) message on their packaging, they run the risk of looking like they've got something to hide."
Health choices
The Department of Health launched the scheme yesterday. Speaking about the scheme, Public Health Minister Anna Soubry said: "Research shows that, of all the current schemes, people like this label the most and they can use the information to make healthier choices."
Consumer research group Which? also welcomed the scheme.
Cassidy echoed Soubry's views. He said: "Any system which helps consumers make healthier choices is clearly a good thing and a?consistent system facilitates easier comparison between products.
"Our research with consumers clearly shows that we don't read packaging in a rational way when shopping because it's in our nature to be irrational, and prone to making decisions based on emotion, not reason.
"Therefore the 'traffic light' colour system has the chance to be more successful than its predecessors, as it taps into pre-existing semiotic codes and is a more intuitive, emotional approach; consumers will easily and quickly recognise that red equals bad and green equals good.
"It's not perfect though and there remains scope for it to be misleading. For example a product could appear to be healthy with mostly green lights and only one red, but in reality the health impact of the red light might outweigh the greens."
