KEY POINTS:
A push for tough "traffic light" food labelling always looked likely from Sue Kedgley's obesity inquiry.
As head of the health select committee inquiry, she had to be open to the evidence of both anti-obesity lobbyists and the food industry. But with the Green MP in charge, a
call for greater controls on the food supply was almost inevitable.
In a report critical of the existing food "environment", the committee yesterday called for the Government to oversee a tightening of the labelling, marketing, advertising and promotion of unhealthy foods.
This would be generally voluntary at first, effectively a challenge to the industry to make good on its stated wish to be part of the solution.
But if the industry fails to meet tight deadlines, the MPs have proposed whipping it into line with new regulations. A majority want a "user-friendly, easily understood" traffic-light or equivalent labelling system designed, applied first to popular children's foods.
It has left the details to others, but in their simplest form, the labels could be green, orange or red stickers on food packaging to tell the buyer if the item is healthy, unhealthy, or in-between.
This would match the Health Ministry's "every day", "sometimes" and "occasional" classifications.
It sounds simple - in theory buyers will shun unhealthy items, leaving shelves of unwanted red-dot croissants, crisps and pies, a message to manufacturers to cut sugar, salt and saturated fat content - but there are complications.
An alternative is Britain's voluntary system of four red, orange or green bars per pack, one each for fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt, plus some numbers.
Such a scheme would help the motivated shopper with time to read and digest, but would be unlikely to influence the many consumers who bypass or do not understand the existing number-based nutrition panels, regardless of whether they are being harangued by whining toddlers who "just want chippies".
A single dot would be simpler, but risks putting people off double-edged foods such as cheese that are likely to get an orange dot if high in fat.
The food industry in general opposes traffic lights, considering them too simplistic, and is moving to fend them off with alternatives.
Already some major suppliers are labelling breakfast cereals, snack bars and hamburgers to state the percentage of your ideal average daily intake of a range of nutrients you will obtain from the food, assuming you are an average adult.
Britain's food supply has settled into two camps, multiple traffic lights and average-daily-intake, and consumers are left to work out what's healthy.
As New Zealand nutritionist Professor John Birkbeck says of food: "Unfortunately, it just isn't simple."
